Vice President Kamala Harris has faced her fair share of mockery over the years — thanks to her slew of word salads, meme-worthy soundbites and ill-timed cackles.
From her confusing love of being “unburdened by what has been,” to falling out of coconut trees and being obsessed with Venn diagrams, the 59-year-old current VP’s head-scratching gibberish has made her the butt of social media mockery and even the focus of late-night TV skits.
Now, after becoming the Democratic front-runner for the 2024 election after President Biden suddenly dropped out of the race, here is a look at some of her truly “Veep”-worthy outbursts and gaffes:
Being ‘unburdened’
Harris has all but made “unburdened” a rallying cry of sorts — even after much mockery.
“I can imagine what can be, and be unburdened by what has been,” she had said repeatedly, often with a knowing smile — with one compilation of her saying it over the years stretching out to four minutes.
Another mashup shows her intoning the perplexing line gravely more than 20 times — with many commentators still baffled by exactly what she’s trying to say.
Some critics have asked, “Can we just be unburdened from her?” — while others have mocked her for being “unburdened by complacency.”
Venn diagrams
Her bizarre declarations of love for Venn diagrams has also made good fodder.
“I love Venn diagrams. I really do, I love Venn diagrams. It’s just something about those three circles and the analysis about where there is the intersection, right?” the VP gushed in one viral clip that first surfaced in October 2022.
Harris has repeatedly insisted that Venn logic is her favorite method to deal with conflict.
She bizarrely professed her love for the tool again in February 2023 when she revealed at a White House event that she always asks aides if there’s one on hand.
“I love Venn diagrams,” Harris said. “Always ask, ‘Is there a Venn diagram for this?’ I’m telling you, it’s fascinating when you do. So, Venn diagram, those three circles, right?”
Her 2024 campaign is apparently trying to capitalize on the strange obsession, with the Kamala HQ X account tweeting out an image declaring the need for “Holding Trump accountable.”
The coconut tree
Harris and her team have managed to seize on one particularly meme-worthy remark she’s made while in office: the coconut tree.
It dates back to a speech Harris delivered in May 2023 when she was swearing in commissioners for the White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics.
During the speech, the VP tried to explain the need to invest in the next generation of Americans — bringing up a quote her mother used to say to her regarding how something doesn’t exist without a predecessor.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people, you think you just fell out of a coconut tree,” Harris said midway through — breaking into a wild cackle. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what you came before you.”
After Biden endorsed her on Sunday, the meme resurfaced and went viral again as even members of her own party got in on the action by mentioning coconut trees or using coconut emojis as they voiced their support for her.
Clapping along
A smiling Harris was caught on camera cluelessly clapping along as a man began singing in Spanish outside a community center in Puerto Rico in March 2024 — until she was told what he was actually saying.
She had ventured into a courtyard after her visit to the Goyoco community center in San Juan when the protester broke into song in Spanish.
“We want to know, Kamala, what did you come here for? We want to know,” the man sang. “The vice president is here making history. We want to know what she thinks of the colony.”
“Long live Free Palestine and Haiti, too,” he added — with Harris’ huge grin and eager clapping only stopping after an aide appeared to inform her of the lyrics.
Wheels on the bus
Footage of Harris singing the “The Wheels on the Bus” nursery rhyme in a totally different tune has also popped up repeatedly over the years.
The original clip, which was filmed during the 2020 campaign, showed an upbeat Harris approaching her campaign bus, saying, “I love it.”
She then belted out the lyrics “The wheels on the bus go round and round” before erupting into laughter.
Separately, but on the same theme, Harris also drew fresh mockery in late 2022 after touting her love of “yellow school buses” during a Seattle visit to tout electric school vehicles.
“Who doesn’t love a yellow school bus, right? Can you raise your hand if you love a yellow school bus? Many of us went to school on the yellow school bus, right? It’s part of our experience growing up,” she said.
“It’s part of a nostalgia, a memory of the excitement and joy of going to school to be with your favorite teacher, to be with your best friends and to learn. The school bus takes us there.”
Word salad
Harris has faced ridicule over her numerous word salads at various public events and in interviews over the years.
She drew mockery for an incoherent phrase she uttered at a music festival in New Orleans in July 2023 when she gave a repetitive definition of the word “culture” — before breaking into her trademark laugh.
“Culture is — it is a reflection of our moment in our time, right? And in present culture is the way we express how we’re feeling about the moment,” Harris said.
Just months earlier, the VP spoke at a White House event for Women’s History Month in March 2023 to “honor the women who made history throughout history.”
Then, in December 2023, Harris was mocked again for stumbling over her words in an MSNBC interview when she declared the 2024 race for the White House “is the most election of our lifetime.”
Harris had yet another head-scratching “moment” in April 2023 when she addressed an abortion rights rally at Howard University.
“So, I think it’s very important, as you have heard from so many incredible leaders, for us at every moment in time — and certainly this one — to see the moment in time in which we exist and are present, and to be able to contextualize it, to understand where we exist in the history and in the moment as it relates not only to the past but the future,” she told the crowd.
Even “The Daily Show” poked fun at her unintelligible outbursts, pretending in a skit that Harris was trained by a “holistic thought adviser” named Dahlia Rose Hibiscus to “speak without thinking.”
“Words have vibrations. The feeling that they give you is so much more powerful than what they mean,” the pretend coach quipped of Harris’ often confusing statements.
A cackling laugh
One of Harris’ beloved Venn diagrams would show a common feature in most of her meme-worthy outbursts — her notorious laugh.
Her wild cackle — often at unsuitable moments — has made her meme-worthy, with Libs of TikTok once posting a two-minute-long mashup of her roaring with laughter.
The vice president has had mixed reactions to her awkward laughter during interviews and events over the years.