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Hillary Clinton Is Standing Up for Kamala Harris After She’s Called “Frivolous”

Cindy Ord/WireImage, Ethan Miller; Getty Images

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is standing with Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris after a sexist attack. In an interview on SiriusXM on Wednesday, Clinton gave her thoughts on a viral Wall Street Journal article, in which conservative columnist Peggy Noonan accused Harris of coming across as “insubstantial” and "frivolous" for dancing on the campaign trail.

One of the first things Clinton pointed out was how Noonan didn't have any of the same sharp words about President Donald Trump "trying to dance."

“This commentator, who sadly, unfortunately, is a woman―who’s been a right-wing Republican mouthpiece for a long time―she didn’t say how absurd it was to see Donald Trump kind of galumphing around the stage. It was all about Kamala,” Clinton said.

Clinton continued, mocking the column's implications. “‘Oh, can someone so frivolous, so prone to being happy, be our vice president?’ Give me a break,” she said.

However, even with this blatant display of sexism published and widely circulated online, Clinton said the subsequent outrage and pushback at the column was "encouraging" to see. To her, this shows that people are even more tuned in now than in 2016 to the misogyny that women on the campaign trails face.

MSNBC news anchor Nicole Wallace was one of many people giving pushback to Noonan's article, calling her out for inappropriately criticizing Harris' dancing. "When you’re a white woman and you're a Republican, there's just certain stuff culturally that you don’t know jack bleep about...This, to me, felt tone-deaf, it felt nasty, and it felt personal and it felt bitchy," she said when broadcasting live.

Political analyst and television host Zerlina Maxwell also commented on the now infamous column, contradicting Noonan's statements that Harris' dancing was "embarrassing" by stating that she found it "inspiring" to see a Black woman dancing in a pandemic.

"For me, seeing Kamala Harris out on the campaign trail is important, on a personal level," Maxwell said. "Seeing her on-stage in a political context, dancing to Mary J. Blige, gives me life. It makes me feel seen."

In addition to being encouraged by these defenses against sexism, Clinton also had a message of hope for the upcoming election: “I do think Kamala is going to be our vice president, which is enormous in every historic sense we can think of. And then I think she’s going to acquit herself really well,” Clinton said.

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