Vice President Kamala Harris went viral after appearing to adopt a “French accent” during a visit to a COVID-19 lab in Paris.
As the highest-ranking member of the Biden administration to visit France, the vice president began her program in Paris on Tuesday. The five-day tour is intended to repair some of the damage created by a series of missteps made by the White House in dealings with the French.
During her trip to France, Harris visited the Institute Pasteur and spoke with a group of scientists regarding the US-France scientific research alliance on scientific research.
She also stated that politicians should act more like scientists.
“One of the things people in politics and government should really take from the approach of scientists- scientists operate with a hypothesis. I love that,” Harris said on Monday. “A hypothesis- it’s well-thought-out, it’s well-planned, they start out with a hypothesis and then they test it out knowing invariably, you’re trying something for the first time, there will be glitches, there will be mistakes.
Then everyone gets together, no one gets beat up about it, you analyze it- what went wrong, reevaluate, update the hypothesis and start again.”
Harris then turned her focus to what politicians do, criticizing how they constantly stick to “The Plan” they campaigned on, but she appeared to vary her dialect anytime she used that phrase.
“In government, we campaign with ‘The Plan,’” Harris said. “Uppercase T, uppercase P, ‘The Plan!’ And then the environment is such we’re expected to defend ‘The Plan’ even when the first time we roll it out there may be some glitches and it’s time to reevaluate and then do it again.”
On social media, the vice president’s words were panned as “cringe.”
“Is she using a FRENCH ACCENT?!” asked Abigail Marone, press secretary for Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., adding “I love this episode of Veep.”
“There really are no words anymore… #AuRevoir,” Fox News contributor Joe Concha wrote.
“I wonder if she practiced accents with her child actor friends,” GOP strategist Matt Whitlock quipped, alluding to the science video she appeared in alongside child actors.
“I thought we canceled Pepe Depew,” Washington Examiner commentator Becket Adams joked.
CNN contributor Scott Jennings tweeted, “This is what Biden thinks of France, our oldest ally.”
Harris has been generally viewed as the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer in 2024 if President Biden does not run for a second term, but polls show her being viewed even more negatively than her boss.
According to a recent USA Today/Suffolk University poll, Harris has a 28% approval rating among Americans, ten points lower than Biden.
The vice president has long been criticized for her handling of the border crisis after Biden assigned her to handle the source of the migration surge.
