Former Trump staffer and current Fox Business host Monica Crowley was called out after making the racist and sexist assertion that Democrats are trying to sell Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign as former President Barack Obama except "in a skirt."
Complaining about the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s remarkable rise in support since President Joe Biden's exit from the race, Crowley questioned how Harris transitioned so rapidly from "historically the most unpopular vice president in recent American history" to the "belle of the ball" for the nation's liberal wing.
She also suggested in her interview with pundit Caroline Sunshine that Harris' popularity has only soared because of her racial identity—becoming only the latest conservative voice to lean into racist tropes due to Harris' Tamil Indian and Afro-Jamaican ancestry.
She said:
"They are trying to sell her as Obama in a skirt, basically trying to create momentum around Kamala Harris based on identity politics, the fact she’s a woman of color and would be the first woman of color as president.”
"How is the Trump campaign planning to counter that type of messaging?"
Sunshine agreed, adding:
"Absolutely! Well, we're watching, as you just said, we're watching Kamala Harris get the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama treatment from the liberal mainstream media and the Democrat Party."
"The problem is the liberal mainstream media and the Democrat Party have the same blinders on they had in 2016. It's almost the exact same playbook."
You can hear their remarks in the video below.
Crowley—not to mention Sunshine—have been harshly criticized.
Sunshine later said that Harris’ “policies couldn’t be more out of touch with where the average American is at," choosing to cite an anti-fracking position Harris no longer holds that Republicans have seized on amid ongoing, often racially-charged attempts to discredit her candidacy and decades of experience as the result of a simple "DEI hire."
Former President Donald Trump himself recently made headlines after claiming Harris "happened to turn Black” and suggesting that “all of a sudden, she made a turn” in her racial identity.
At the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention in Chicago, Trump was asked if he agreed with Republicans who have labeled Harris a "DEI hire" and he responded by casting doubts on Harris's heritage. He said he "didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black."
Trump has faced heated criticism since then but his attacks don't appear to be working given Harris's rising popularity.
Harris’s presidential campaign announced it raised over $310 million in July, with a record-breaking $200 million coming in during the first week after she became the presumptive Democratic nominee,
According to the campaign, last month's fundraising shattered several records, including the fastest time to raise a billion dollars and a surge of donations following Biden's announcement that he would no longer run for president. Notably, two-thirds of the donations came from first-time contributors.
This surge in contributions and grassroots support has nearly eliminated the fundraising and cash advantage that Trump held over Biden earlier this summer, just in time for this month’s Democratic National Convention, which begins in Chicago on August 19th.
