Fox pundits repeat attacks on “radical and incompetent” Kamala Harris

“Kamala is even more radical and incompetent than old Joe Biden,” said Jesse Watters, who called her a “California socialist” and declared she was “even more unpopular than the most unpopular president in American history.”

Sean Hannity, an on-air ally and off-air adviser to Donald Trump, credited her with an “appalling” and allegedly “radical left” track record and stressed that voters “seem to detest Kamala Harris.”

Laura Ingraham called the vice president a “globalist puppet” who had replaced “the old globalist puppet.”

“Nobody who truly loves this country, nobody who truly wants the best for the American people, would ever subject us to someone like Kamala Harris,” Ingraham said. “They know Harris is incompetent, just like they knew Biden was incompetent.”

Watters also described Harris as a sort of puppet of the Democratic establishment. “Kamala is probably easier to manipulate than Joe Biden,” he said.

Several Fox hosts accused Harris of being part of a “cover-up,” as Watters put it, and of obscuring the extent of Biden’s downfall. “Up until the last minute, she lied to the American people,” Ingraham said. On Hannity’s show, former Trump White House official Kellyanne Conway said Harris “led the chorus of liars.” Fox host Mark Levin struck an even grander and more conspiratorial tone, saying Harris has “violated the Constitution every day since she became vice president of the United States” by not invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the president and should therefore “never be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office.”

Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary and frequent Fox contributor, called Harris “a liberal from San Francisco who failed” to stop the flow of migrants at the southern border after Biden tapped her to work on a program to address the root causes that drive people to flee Central America to the United States.

Right-wing critics have long avoided the issue of Harris’s ethnicity, attributing her rise to affirmative action, or “DEI,” the acronym for diversity, equality and inclusion programs that have drawn criticism from conservatives.

Watters – who last month theorized that Democratic insiders were plotting to put Harris in power during a second Biden term in what he called a “DEI presidency” – predicted that any Democrat who challenges her for the nomination “will unleash a bloodbath of identity politics.” His guest, investor Jason Calacanis, warned that “the concept of a DEI candidate just isn’t going to work.”

There is a history of Fox-affiliated pundits facing criticism for making inappropriate comments about Harris, particularly her relationship with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown in the 1990s. Pundit Tomi Lahren apologized in 2019 for “a poor choice of words” after tweeting, “Kamala, did you fight for ideals or did you sleep your way to the top with Willie Brown?” Two years later, conservative radio host Jesse Kelly used a crass sexual innuendo on then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s show to describe how Harris launched her career in politics.

Carlson, in turn, repeatedly mispronounced Harris’ first name on the show during the 2020 campaign, prompting one of his guests to correct him and say it was disrespectful. “For someone who is on the national ballot, pronouncing her name correctly is actually the bare minimum,” Democratic strategist Richard Goodstein said as Carlson laughed.

On Sunday, some Fox commentators preferred to dwell on the perceived uncertainty surrounding the race, suggesting that Michelle Obama – who has repeatedly denied any speculation about her own candidacy – or another candidate could still secure the nomination.

“I don’t even know if she will be,” Hannity said of Harris. “I think other top Democratic politicians have other plans.”