Kamala Harris mistakenly proposes reducing population instead of pollution
Vice President Kamala Harris made a verbal slip on Friday that fed a frenzy of conspiracy theories, after she spoke of the need to 'reduce population' instead of pollution.
'When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water,' Harris said during a speech in Baltimore on combatting climate change.
The White House official transcript of the remarks corrected the obvious error, crossing out the word 'population' and adding 'pollution' in brackets to indicate what Harris intended to say.
The gaffe quickly drew mockery from conservatives on Twitter, especially after a clip of the event was posted by the Republican National Committee's @RNCResearch account, which has been quick to pounce on Harris' slip-ups.
'I see Kamala Harris subscribes to the Thanos approach to dealing with scarce resources,' one user joked, referring to the fictional Marvel villain who wiped out half the population of the universe.
Vice President Kamala Harris made a verbal slip on Friday that fed a frenzy of conspiracy theories, after she spoke of the need to 'reduce population' instead of pollution
The White House official transcript of the remarks corrected the obvious error, crossing out the word 'population' and adding 'pollution' in brackets to indicate what Harris intended to say
The comment also fed into longstanding conspiracy theories that a cabal of global elites have plans to dramatically reduce the world human population in order to more easily monitor and control people.
'She said the quiet part out loud,' one user remarked, possibly jokingly.
Versions of the unfounded theory date back at least to the 1960s, when fringe figures proposed that vaccines or water fluoridation were communist plots to wipe out the US population and take control of the country.
The theory enjoyed a renaissance during the COVID-19 pandemic, when conspiracy theories falsely proposed that vaccines to protect against the virus were a plot to curb world population.
Like Harris' other recent gaffes, the mistake drew attention away from the purpose of her remarks, in which she spoke about a $20 billion investment in a national financing network to fund clean energy projects as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Harris has drawn conservative ridicule repeatedly in recent days over her verbal gaffes, including a jumbled explanation of artificial intelligence earlier this week.
'AI is kind of a fancy thing. First of all, it's two letters. It means 'Artificial Intelligence," Harris told a roundtable gathering of labor and civil rights leaders in Washington DC on Wednesday.
She continued: 'It's about machine learning, and so, the machine is taught — and part of the issue here is what information is going into the machine that will then determine — and we can predict then, if we think about what information is going in, what then will be produced in terms of decisions and opinions that may be made through that process.'
Harris was speaking on Friday at Coppin State University in Baltimore, where she spoke about a $20 billion investment in a national clean financing network and clean energy projects
On Tuesday the VP faced similar criticism over her simplified explanation of transportation at an event alongside Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday.
'This issue of transportation is fundamentally about just making sure that people have the ability to get where they need to go,' she told a gathering of disability rights advocates. 'It's that basic.'
Harris has had a string of similar recent gaffes, and last Friday she awkwardly spewed out a 'word salad' when trying to define 'culture' at New Orleans' Essence Festival.
'Culture is - it is a reflection of our moment and our time. Right?' the vice president mused.
'And present culture is the way we express how we're feeling about the moment, and we should always find times to express how we feel about the moment,' Harris continued.
'That is a reflection of joy. Because, you know,' she said, pausing and then breaking into laughter, 'it comes in the morning.'
She then added, 'We have to find ways to also express the way we feel about the moment in terms of just having language and a connection to how people are experiencing life. And I think about it in that way, too.'
While President Joe Biden, 80, sometimes comes under criticism for verbal stumbles and gaffes, Harris has been accused of talking almost nonsensically at times.
Her signature gaffes involve either bizarrely simplistic truisms, or convoluted explanations that are difficult to decipher.
The Daily Show compared her unfavorably to the HBO show Veep's fictional character Selina Meyer, who had a penchant for using truisms and circular explanations.
In real life, other vice presidents have also faced intense ridicule for their verbal gaffes, as Republican Dan Quayle memorably discovered during George H.W. Bush's administration.
Biden has already committed to keeping Harris on his 2024 ticket as he seeks re-election, though she faces approval ratings that are generally lower than his.
By the latest polling data from July 14, Harris held a 51.3 disapproval rating, with just 39 percent of Americans saying they approved of her, according to FiveThirtyEight.com,
Source: Daily Mail
