Kamala Harris' worst gaffe of 2023 was a doozy

Kamala Harris is a uniquely disliked Vice President by conservatives in America, and this often leads to her comments being heavily scrutinized. Every big gaffe is an opportunity for her enemies to attack and during a speech in July 2023, she said something that not only fueled but also the country's conspiracy theorists.

While speaking about the administration's current climate policy, Harris called for population reduction as a means to achieve America's climate goals. What she said wasn't what she meant but the comment set off conservative political pundits and 'doomer' conspiracy theorists alike.

On July 14th, Harris was delivering a speech about the administration’s plan to cut the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by half before 2030 and to reach net zero before 2050 when she accidentally said the word population instead of pollution. 

“When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water," Harris explained, which would be a problematic statement for any backwoods conservative angry about ‘the climate.’

The crowd reacted with enthusiastic applause despite the Vice President mentioning that she wanted to reduce the population but it was abundantly clear to those watching that Harris almost certainly wasn’t advocating a population reduction as a political policy. 

There was no reason to think that the Biden administration had actually made population reduction a part of its plan to help the United States reach its climate goals before 2050. 

It was more likely that Harris just misread a word. The official White House transcript of the speech showed the word 'population' crossed out with the word 'pollution' bracketed beside it so the most reasonable scenario here is that Harris just misspoke while reading her speech. 

However, the Vice President probably said just about the worst word she could have in the circumstances and linked a policy of active population reduction to Biden’s office, a situation that was lept upon by conservatives online as proof of a wider conspiracy. 

U.S. Representative Thomas Masse seized on the opportunity and asked his audience on Twitter if they were the population that Harris wanted to reduce—a statement indicative of the general malaise of America’s right versus left politics at this moment in time.

The ever-lovely Marjorie Taylor Greene chimed in with her brilliant two sense asking Harris on Twitter what she meant by population reduction: “Abortion? Assisted suicide? Or what means are you suggesting to reduce population in oder to help public health?”

Missouri Senator and all-around pleasant person Eric Schmitt said the Vice President was saying “the quiet part out loud regarding her and other climate alarmists very anti human ideology and their desire to ‘reduce population’.” 

The criticism didn’t just come on Twitter either. Conservative cable news programs also took their shots at Kamala Harris for her slip of the tongue and showed every inch of American political life was drowning in the ‘us versus them’ politics that ruins nations. 

"What she just said, you're not supposed to say if you're a liberal. They've been saying this for a long time, they need to reduce the population to heal the planet,” Fox News’ Jesse Watters said according to Newsweek. 

“This is another one of those Republican conspiracy theories you've said for so long, that Democrats want to reduce the population, and then she just flat out said it,” said Tomi Lahren, a political commentator known for ultraconservative viewpoints. 

The sad reality of American politics is that regardless if any of the people who seized on the Vice President’s slip-up actually believed the Biden administration would reduce the population to hit the country's climate goals, they used the unfortunate gaffe to sow division in America.

What does it say about a nation when a single misused word can spur an entire news cycle and fuel conspiracy theories about one side of the political aisle hoping to kill the people they share a country with in order to meet their policy goals?

Condé Nast legal affairs editor Luke Zaleski said it best when he replied to Thomas Masse’s tweet saying: “It’s impossible to imagine she meant pollution and misspoke right? Just beyond any possibility that’s exactly what happened? So you have no choice but to fearmonger and propagandize right?”

Harris wasn’t advocating population reduction as a policy and it's disingenuous for American political commentators and representatives to say otherwise. Yet that wouldn't have mattered to the people who listen to them as they worked to sow conspiracy and divide the nation.