Kamala Harris was roasted by The Daily Show for her “word salad” speeches

A late-night comedy show criticized Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday for her multiple viral “word salads” during her first three years in office, joking that they were the result of a special “thought advisor” on her staff.

Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” featured well-known viral video clips of Harris talking in circles about the “meaning of the passage of time,” the “need to go and be able to get where you need to go” and her comment about ‘the time for us to do what we do and that time is every day.’

The show presented a fictional character named “Dahlia Rose Hibiscus,” played by comedian Desi Lydic, who joked that she was the “holistic thought advisor” behind Harris’ political speeches.

The ‘advisor’ character said Harris’ confusing comments were ‘word journeys’ rather than ‘sentences’, citing the vice president’s viral ‘coconut tree’ speech as an example.

“It’s a process I call speaking without thinking,” the “thought advisor” character explains. ‘It’s not about the destination of the thought, it’s about the journey and how many words you use to describe the journey.’

The video also shows Harris at a joint press conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda on March 10, 2022, during which he spoke about Russia’s atrocities during the war in Ukraine.

“That’s on top of everything else that we know and don’t know yet based on what we may have just seen and because we saw it or not doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” Harris said.

The “thought consultant” jokes that she begins her work by breaking up the vice president’s speeches, which are drafted by her staff, into individual words and then rearranging them, such as her comment about “the ability to see unencumbered by what has been’.

Other Harris speeches in the humorous video include those from the vice president remark about the ability to see ‘the moment in time in which we exist in our present and be able to contextualize it, to understand where we exist in history and in the moment, as this concerns not only the past but also on the future. ‘

“I hear the counterarguments all the time,” the character adds. “People should be able to understand what their leaders are saying when they talk, but I prefer to leave Kamala’s thoughts open to interpretation as a modern work of art that you look at and say, ‘I wonder what that was all about. ‘

Harris earned ridicule for her so-called “word salads” during her first three years as vice president, as even her allies admitted she struggled with her rhetoric.

“It’s true that she often loads her sentences with more dependent clauses than they can bear, and verbatim transcriptions of her improvised remarks can sometimes be difficult to follow,” Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson. wrote in April 2023.

As President Joe Biden and Harris increase their activities on the campaign trail, the vice president has sharpened her speeches and carefully stayed within her prepared themes on key campaign issues.

But at an event in Washington, D.C. with Asian Americans and comedian Jimmy O. Yang, Harris used the “f-bomb” to emphasize a point she was making about seizing opportunities.

“Sometimes people will open the door for you and leave it open, and sometimes they won’t — and then you have to kick the damn door down,” Harris said.

The White House apologized for the comment, noting that the vice president was “passionate” about the issue.

“I think it’s important to have someone who is passionate about what he or she speaks about,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. “I couldn’t be more proud to have her as someone I look up to as vice president and I think a lot of people here would say the same.”