After Joe Biden withdrew out of the 2024 presidential candidacy, Kremlin propagandists and Russian media targeted Vice President Kamala Harris.
Biden, 81, endorsed Harris, 59, to succeed him after he revealed on Sunday that he will not seek a second term in office. The Democratic Party pressured him to retire after a catastrophic CNN debate with Republican Donald Trump in June, raising questions about his mental health and capacity to serve another term.
Harris has received backing from the majority of Democrats in Congress and all Democratic governors in her pursuit for the party’s presidential nomination against Trump. According to an unofficial figure published by The Associated Press on Monday night, Harris has far above the 1,976 delegates required to win on the first round.
After learning that Biden was withdrawing from the 2024 presidential run, guests on Russian state television rushed to attack Harris.
“Kamala with a nuclear button is worse than a monkey with a grenade,” Andrey Sidorov, head of foreign politics at Moscow Russian University, stated on the Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov show, aired by Russian TV channel Russia-1.
Harris’ laugh was also analyzed on the broadcast, according to Agentstvo, an independent Russian investigative website. An snippet of Trump calling the vice president “Laffin’ Kamala” was shown.
Kremlin propagandists broadcast a video of Trump stating, “I call her ‘Laffin’ Kamala.” Have you ever watched her laugh? She is crazy. A laugh can reveal a lot.
Solovyov, a Putin friend and state TV anchor, referred to Harris as “a merry giggler.”
Russian pundits criticized the vice president in a separate show on Russia-1, which was published on X (previously Twitter) by Julia Davis of Daily Beast.
“If Harris stays, how much do we know about her?” “She is distilled evil,” claimed Oleg Matveychev, a member of Russia’s State Duma. “At least Biden represented a relic of old conservative America…[Harris] represents the devil in his purest form.”
On Monday, the Russian tabloid publication Komsomolskaya Pravda called Harris a “lame duck’s accomplice with a nuclear button.”
Newsweek reached out to Kamala Harris’s spokesperson via email for comment.
On Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov responded on Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race, citing Putin’s February remarks that “predictable” Biden was preferred to Russia over Trump, but that he was happy to cooperate with any US president.
“Biden is a more seasoned, dependable politician from the old school. But we would cooperate with any US leader who is trusted by the American people,” Putin stated at the time.
“The elections are still four months away, and in that time, a lot may change. “We must be patient and closely monitor what happens,” Peskov told the Russian Telegram channel SHOT.
In a statement released late Monday, Harris stated that when she declared her presidential campaign, “I said I intended to go out and earn this nomination.”
“Tonight, I am proud to have secured the broad support needed to become our party’s nominee, and as a daughter of California, I am proud that my home state’s delegation helped put our campaign over the top,” she said afterwards. “I look forward to formally accepting the nomination soon.”