Journalist and podcast host Kara Swisher recounted Monday how Vice President Kamala Harris scolded her in front of an audience over a question about Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) RFK Jr. that she previously laughed about backstage when the journalist brought it up.
"I just had an experience with Kamala Harris where we were joking about something backstage about Robert Kennedy Jr., circumcision and autism — the link he was making, a link which is not there. And it was so weird. It was like, ‘That’s so f------ strange.’ And then when I got on stage and mentioned it because it had just been in the news, right? She looked at me dead and said, ‘This is nothing to laugh about,'" Swisher told The New Yorker's Isaac Chotiner during her podcast.
Swisher interviewed Harris on her book tour at a Washington, D.C., stop in October. The first question Swisher asked was about her backstage reaction to RFK Jr. connecting "circumcision and autism."
"And she had just laughed about it. And then she went into this sort of high-handed kind of thing where she was like yelling at me for even asking the question. I was like, ‘I’m going to kill you. I literally can’t believe you just did that,' which was interesting. And I thought it was a real insight," Swisher said.
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Chotiner reacted by adding, "I sometimes get the sense that she doesn't realize her political career is over."
During the October interview, Harris responded to Swisher's question with a lengthy description of her family and how her mother worked at the National Institutes of Health.
"My mother was an adviser at NIH, and she would leave us in the Bay Area to go to NIH to work with scientists who have as their goal to alleviate pain and to uplift the human condition. And when I see what these people are doing right now to end the war on cancer, to deny science and fire scientist, Kara, it’s personal for me. It’s personal for me, and I can’t laugh at it," she said.
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The former vice president said people would "die" because of the Trump administration's actions.
"I can't laugh about that, I'm sorry," she added. "It's f----- up."
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Swisher smiled and pointed at Harris as the audience applauded the answer. Harris then shrugged and shook her head as the journalist tried to move to the next question.
Harris toured the country in 2025 to discuss her book about her historically short presidential campaign.


