By C. Douglas Golden October 10, 2024 at 5:17am
As Florida was being targeted by Hurricane Milton, Vice President Kamala Harris also found herself in the crosshairs — this time for a viral hot mic moment.
The clip, which came during a virtual briefing on the Category 3 storm that featured both Harris and President Joe Biden, led many to suspect she was being fed her lines and questions by someone off-screen.
The briefing, which took place early Wednesday afternoon, also included National Weather Service Director Ken Graham, Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell and others.
The major news that came from the media briefing was a rant by the president over claims “the money is needed to — for the — in the — for this crisis is being diverted to migrants.”
“It’s got to stop,” Biden said, according to RealClearPolitics. “In moments like this, there are no red or blue states.”
Whether or not this will stop the back-and-forth over whether federal money is being tied up in places it shouldn’t be thanks to the Biden administration’s border crisis remains to be seen. However, the media briefing also went viral when Harris had a very Biden-esque moment of her own.
While the vice president wasn’t at the White House with Biden, she joined virtually to warn of the dangers of Milton, which eventually hit Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday night, according to The Associated Press.
Just before Harris was set to speak, she could be seen covering her mouth, then saying to someone off-camera, “It’s a live broadcast.”
She then segued into a question for Graham: “Hey, Ken, I have a question for you. You — you mentioned ‘words matter,’ and I know there is a lot of media following this — this briefing. So, there have been — we’ve gone from a Cat 5 to a Cat 4, and the language that a lot of folks have been using is ‘downgrade,’” she said, as per a White House transcript.
Is Kamala Harris fit to be president?
“But it sounds like you’re cautioning us that that may communicate a sense that the danger is lessened, when, in fact, it’s not. Can you talk a little bit about that?”
Kamala barks “it’s a live broadcast” at staffers and covers her mouth to try to hide it but she forgot to mute her mic
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 9, 2024
The White House transcript, notably, did not include any mention of the “It’s a live broadcast remark.” Instead, it simply said the veep’s remarks were “(Inaudible.)”
Numerous conservatives and conservative accounts on social media — including Trump War Room, an official Trump campaign account on the social media platform X — made note of the gaffe and insinuated that Harris was being given her lines.
“Kamala can be heard telling an aide (who is feeding her questions) that it’s a ‘live broadcast’ before immediately asking the question,” the Trump War Room post stated. “She’s a total fraud.”
That thought was echoed by others:
BUSTED!!
Kamala is heard telling an aide who is feeding her questions, that it’s a “live broadcast. She then asks the question she was presumably given.
When you realize what a fraud this woman is, you can’t unsee it. pic.twitter.com/ejRHtOPUlm
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) October 9, 2024
NEW: Kamala Harris struggles through a live broadcast on Hurricane Milton, covers her mouth to tell her staff she is on a live broadcast before stumbling while reading prepared notes.
“It’s a live broadcast,” Harris told her team before reading their notes.
“To the people of… pic.twitter.com/BGeSLtQPDe
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 9, 2024
PATHETIC: Kamala Harris just forgot to mute her mic while telling the intern feeding her Hurricane questions that “it’s a live broadcast.”
If you needed MORE proof Kamala is merely an incompetent puppet, here it is. pic.twitter.com/dYwmyHfUYA
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) October 9, 2024
However, it was unclear whether she was actually being fed the lines.
Regardless, the incident also marked the return of another commonplace element under the Biden administration: the doctoring of official White House transcripts to make either the president or someone in his orbit — in this case, his chosen successor as the Democratic presidential nominee — look more coherent.
While these edits usually involved Biden’s gaffes, one notable example of the compilers cleaning up for Harris came in July 2023, when she told an audience in Baltimore that, “When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water.”
In the transcript, the word “population” is crossed out. The word “pollution” is substituted for it in brackets.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture
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