It took less than 24 hours for the attacks on Kamala Harris to get deeply sexist and extremely ugly
US Vice President Kamala Harris.
It didn’t take long for Vice President Kamala Harris to be hit with a barrage of sexist and racist attacks after President Joe Biden endorsed her for the presidential run.
After ripping into Biden by calling him old, senile, and mentally incapable of running for reelection, the GOP is now attacking Harris for being ethnically Black and South Asian, and also for just being a woman.
The GOP is ripping into her race, calling her a “DEI hire”
Speaking to CNN on Monday, Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee said he was “100 percent” sure Harris was a mediocre “DEI hire.”
And Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin said he thought the Democratic Party only backed Harris “because of her ethnic background.”
Others, like conservative commentator Paul Ingrassia, are criticizing her identity as a child of immigrant parents.
Ingrassia erroneously claimed that Harris was not a “natural-born citizen” and shouldn’t be allowed to run for the top ticket. Harris was born in Oakland, California, making her a natural-born citizen and eligible to run for the presidency.
Harris is also facing a barrage of sexist attacks
Some in the GOP are also baselessly accusing Harris of sleeping her way to the top.
Far-right blogger and Trump ally Laura Loomer leveled groundless accusations at Harris, accusing her of being “an escort,” among other unsubstantiated allegations. Loomer also accused Harris of having an illicit relationship with Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco.
Reuters fact-checked a photo of Harris and Brown in 2020, reporting that Brown had been separated from his wife for over a decade when Harris dated him in the mid-1990s.
Loomer also implied that Harris had an inappropriate relationship with TV host and actor Montel Williams, prompting Williams to defend Harris on X.
To be sure, race- and gender-driven attacks on Harris are not new. For instance, in 2021, then-Senate candidate JD Vance branded her as being part of a group of “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.”
This was despite the fact that she is the stepmother of two children.
And Jackson Lahmeyer, who founded the “Pastors for Trump” movement, wrote on X on July 4: “Both Joe + the Ho gotta go!”
He also called Harris a “whore” and “harlot” while replying to comments on his post.
Experts say such attacks are to be expected in a presidential race this brutal
Political experts told BI they expected Trump and his party to launch these racist and personal attacks, and added this onslaught is likely to get more intense as the race progresses.
“America has a deep history of attacks being on the basis of race, so it is not unexpected,” said Thomas Hollihan, a professor of communication at USC Annenberg.
But these attacks, he said, will have little effect on undecided voters and will only help galvanize the GOP’s existing base.
Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor from Northeastern University, echoed this sentiment.
“As an African and Asian American woman, Vice President Harris is likely to face a barrage of subtle and overt racist and sexist attacks in this race, but many voters will reject these and be personally offended by them,” he said.
“Americans expect better,” Panagopoulos added.
Although Hillary Clinton also bore the brunt of sexist attacks as a female presidential candidate in 2016, the experts told BI that Harris is going to have it much worse.
“The attacks on Kamala Harris likely will be more vicious because she is not white, and there are just over 100 days before the election, ” said Jonathan Aronson, a communication and international relations professor from USC Annenberg.
“Attacks on Hillary stretched over many years,” he said.
Hollihan said as well that he thought the attacks on Harris would be more severe than they were for Clinton, because “they are animated by race and gender.”
Representatives for Harris did not immediately respond to a request for comment from B-17 sent outside regular business hours.
