Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at her campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del., Monday, July 22, 2024. (Erin Schaff/The New York Times via AP, Pool)
A slew of racist, sexist, and outright bizarre conspiracy theories flooded the internet after Joe Biden decided to end his campaign and endorsed Kamala Harris for president.
Kamala Harris is part of a “cult” and sometimes wears a “purple suit” to “manifest her becoming president since day 1 by copying Lisa from the Simpsons.” Barack Obama has been secretly running the White House and is seeking his fourth term as president through Harris. The June presidential debate was a “hit job” on President Joe Biden by his own party. Biden is dying or dead. Harris has “the spirit of Jezebel.”
These are just a few of the utterly bizarre, offensive, and outlandish claims spread by Republican politicians, right-wing media figures, and MAGA influencers since Biden announced on Sunday that he would end his presidential campaign and endorsed Harris to lead the Democratic ticket.
After months of feverishly attacking Biden’s age and ability to serve a second term, the right-wing ecosystem was enraged by Biden’s decision to step aside and resorted to racist and sexist remarks about Harris and spreading some truly out-there conspiracy theories about Biden’s decision.
Let’s take a look.
Sexist and racist attacks on Harris
Harris, you might have noticed, is a Black woman. And that is enough to drive a non-trivial portion of the right absolutely crazy. They’ve spent months attacking Harris—a former local prosecutor, district attorney, state attorney general, and US Senator—as a “DEI” [Diversity and Equity Initiative] vice president and criticizing her laugh.
@couriernewsroom The MAGA Right have turned their attention and focus to Vice President Kamala Harris — using overt racism to attack the highest-ranking Black woman to ever serve the United States.
But things got even stranger—and much, much more offensive—on Sunday.
One influential right-wing influencer posted to X that Harris is “proof that women can sleep their way to the top.” Another claimed she will engage in sex acts with voters to win the elections. A third implied the same.
Trump ally Laura Loomer also launched an ugly attack on Harris—who has multiple step-children but no biological children—and urged Republicans to go further into the gutter in their attacks on her.
“It’s time for Republicans to start talking about @KamalaHarris’s sexual history and the reason why she likely doesn’t have any children of her own,” Loomer said. “A woman who has no biological children of her own should not be allowed to make decisions in the White House for your children.”
Other right-wing figures piled on, suggesting only people with biological children should be able to run for public office or vote.
A top Trump ally also reignited the right’s birtherism conspiracy theory that previously surrounded Obama by suggesting Harris—who was born in California—might not be eligible to serve as president. Many online right-wing influencers similarly called into question her citizenship, spreading conspiracies about her being ineligible to serve as president or VP and calling her an “anchor baby.”
Republican Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin even said on Sunday that the only reason Harris might become the Democratic party’s nominee is “because of her ethnic background.”
On Monday, Republican Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee went back to the racist well of rhetoric, calling Harris a “DEI hire.”
Far-right live streamer Stew Peters launched an even more direct attack on Harris’ heritage.
“The leading Democrat presidential candidate’s mother was named Shyamala Gopalan,” Peters wrote on Monday. “That should be enough for disqualification.”
Loomer took an equally offensive approach, claiming Harris was “not a Black woman.”
Does anyone know what a coup is?
While some individuals on the right spent Sunday and Monday attacking Harris, others honed in on Biden’s decision to step aside as somehow being part of a “coup” so that Harris could be installed as a replacement, allowing the Democrats to steal the 2024 election from Trump.
As WIRED reported, that narrative was already being pushed before Biden’s decision, but picked up traction on Sunday.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson—who was the architect of Trump’s efforts to try and overturn the 2020 election in the US House—is among those who embraced the coup narrative, falsely claiming Biden was already the official Democratic nominee, when he wasn’t.
“The Democrat Party forced the Democrat nominee off the ballot, just over 100 days before the election,” Johnson said in a post on X.
Other Republicans also embraced that rhetoric, with Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas calling Biden’s decision to step aside a “coup by Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Hollywood donors.”
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene leaned into one of her favored conspiracies, claiming the “coup” against Biden was a “deep state” plot by the “elites in power.”
“There’s a soft civil war happening in the deep state and the elites in power,” Green wrote on X. “The Democrats, the IC [intelligence community], and their activists in the media have been lying to us saying there’s nothing wrong with Biden for years. Next, they start a coup against him demanding he drop out of the race when they couldn’t hide it anymore.”
Needless to say, a candidate deciding to drop out of a campaign is not a coup, nor is it comparable to a deadly assault on the Capitol that left five people dead and hundreds of police officers injured.
Greene, several other Republican lawmakers, and Donald Trump Jr., also suggested Biden was bribed and/or threatened to drop out. Trump himself, meanwhile, spent the day angrily posting on Truth Social, complaining that he had to now campaign against a new opponent.
Other crazy theories
Some far-right figures embraced even crazier conspiracies, including the idea that Biden’s decision to drop out was somehow part of a grand conspiracy that involved the assassination attempt on Trump’s life last week.
“Biden didn’t drop out of the race until after the attempts to imprison and assassinate Donald Trump failed. Do you think that is coincidence?” said Sean Davis, CEO and co-founder of The Federalist, a right wing media outlet.
Loomer echoed that argument: “Now you all see why they tried to assassinate Donald Trump. This was all planned.”
“The only reason @JoeBiden is dropping out today is because his administration plotted an assassination of Donald Trump and missed,” Loomer said. “It’s a lot easier to drop out over ‘peer pressure’ and an illness than to be forced to resign once the American people learn all about how the Biden admin plotted to put a bullet in Donald Trump’s head.”
What’s next?
Who knows, but it’ll almost certainly only get dumber from here.
Author
Why people are so concerned about Trump picking RFK Jr. to lead US public health
Trump’s pick for health secretary wants to increase access to raw milk, remove fluoride from drinking water, and has said that vaccines cause autism...
Hate and harassment towards women spreads after Trump’s election
Over a 24-hour period following Trump’s election, there was a 4,600% increase in the usage of the phrase “your body, my choice” on X. The phrase has...
All the racist, hateful things said at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden
The rally bore glaring similarities to a Nazi rally held at an earlier iteration of Madison Square Garden in 1939. “My reaction is that it was a...
Examining Dan Bishop’s ties to far-right extremists, conspiracy theorists, and Jan. 6 rioters
Bishop has ties to groups and individuals who’ve spread racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-Muslim conspiracy theories; denounced the separation of...
