Vice President Kamala Harris suggested sexism was to blame for comments about her notorious cackling laugh in an interview with Drew Barrymore — crediting her mother for her tendency to break out in ill-timed giggle fits.
“Like, apparently, some people love to talk about the way I laugh,” Harris told the actress-turned-talk-show-host in a segment airing Monday, Mediaite reported.
“Well, let me just tell you something: I have my mother’s laugh,” the veep continued. “And I grew up around a bunch of women, in particular, who laughed from the belly.”
“You know, I’m never going to be —” she said, pausing to mockingly produce a genteel titter behind a ladylike hand. “I’m not that person.”
“And I think it’s really important for us to remind each other and — and our younger ones: Don’t be confined to other people’s perception about what this looks like and … how you should act in order to be.”
“I love your laugh!” Barrymore gushed in response. “And I love that message.”
The appearance came days after CNN reported that a focus group paid for by the Democratic National Committee found Harris’s habit of publicly busting a gut at inappropriate moments — or for inscrutable reasons — irritates voters to no end.
“Several people said Harris rubs them the wrong way,” the outlet reported. “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.”
The Republican Party’s RNC Research account on X has posted multiple videos of Harris “laughing uncontrollably” during White House ceremonies, visits with voters, and official events.
But the nation’s first female vice president has repeatedly come under fire for guffawing at serious moments.
In 2021, as reporters pressed her on the Biden administration’s chaotic and deadly pullout from Afghanistan, Harris convulsed before insisting that the White House “couldn’t have a higher priority right now.”
“Apparently she thinks it’s a laughing matter,” one critic tweeted as footage of her chuckling spread on social media.
Only 36% of voters approve of Harris’s performance as vice president, the USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll found last month.
