(Headline USA) CNN published a glowing report this week on Vice President Kamala Harris’s efforts to rebrand herself and take a more active role on the campaign trail as President Joe Biden continues to fall behind in the polls.
“The vice president is clearly feeling energized these days,” senior reporter Edward–Isaac Dovere wrote in the article. “She is more engaged. She is looser.”
The article seemed to draw a contrast between Harris and Biden, who is regularly guarded by handlers during his public appearances—and even surrounded by aides when walking to and from his helicopter, according to a recent Axios report.
Harris, on the other hand, told the outlet that it has been “very liberating” to be on the campaign trail.
“You can’t forget that for the first probably year and a half, we were landlocked. It was basically me and Joe and a Zoom screen,” she said. “Being out and being able to just have real conversations and not soundbites in an interview—it is liberating.”
In fact, CNN even claimed Harris will play a “critical” role in winning back voters who no longer support Biden.
“There is another swath of voters turned off by the president — and [the Biden campaign’s] internal data shows Harris will be critical to getting them if Biden wants to win a second term,” Dovere wrote.
CNN went on to credit Harris for the Biden campaign’s decision to go on the offensive against former President Donald Trump on the issue of abortion.
Biden’s team, however, still holds Harris at arm’s length, according to the report.
“The bad news: Several people said Harris rubs them the wrong way, in all the ways that are familiar from criticism of her,” Dovere wrote. “A few specifically cited her laugh—a frequent target of Republican operatives who flood clips of it on social media, which defenders say plays into sexism.”
Harris made a similar claim during an interview over the weekend with Drew Barrymore when asked about her infamous cackle.
“Like, apparently, some people love to talk about the way I laugh,” Harris told the actress-turned-talk-show-host.
“Well, let me just tell you something: I have my mother’s laugh,” she continued. “And I grew up around a bunch of women, in particular, who laughed from the belly.”
While some criticisms focus on the obstreperous sound of Harris’s laugh, many are directed at its perceived disingenuousness and her tendency to laugh at inappropriate occasions.
