Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on The Drew Barrymore Show this week for an interview that can only be described as awkward. In one of the more cringe moments, Barrymore pleaded with the vice president to be America’s “momala” because the country is in need of “a hug” and “a great protector.”
The exchange got Megyn thinking about another celebrity who doesn’t seem to understand what everyday Americans are actually facing, Reese Witherspoon.
On Wednesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Batya Ungar-Sargon, author of Second Class, to discuss what out-of-touch ‘elites’ like Witherspoon and Barrymore fail to recognize about the U.S. electorate.
‘Momala’ Harris
Barrymore kicked off the interview with Harris with a question about parenthood. She asked her about her experience as a stepmother to husband Doug Emhoff’s two kids, and the vide president shared that they call her “Momala.”
That led Barrymore to embarrassingly urge Harris to be America’s “Momala.”
BARRYMORE: I keep thinking in my head that we all need a mom. I’ve been thinking that we really all need a tremendous hug in the world right now. But in our country, we need you to be Momala of the country. And as a woman who respects so much, and wants to share, and wants to be confident, and has no ounce of me that has competitiveness, when we lift each other up, we all rise. However, we need a great protector.
For starters, Ungar-Sargon said Barrymore is wrong about the hug. “America doesn’t need a hug – we need a secure border, we need inflation to come down, we need better, affordable health care, we need to get rid of the diploma divide, we need to restore dignity to the working class, we need vocational training,” she explained.
As her book explores, working class Americans, in particular, are not looking for politicians to tell them what to believe. “They don’t need their politicians to share their values or tell them how to feel about things,” Ungar-Sargon noted. “They just need them to enact policies that enable them to keep more of their paycheck.”
Out-of-Touch Elites
The left, on the other hand, is “super into politics as a kind of spirituality,” Ungar-Sargon said. She explained that 10 of the richest counties in the United States vote Democrat, as do the majority of Americans making over $500,000 a year. “They need their politicians to tell them what to think and how to feel about things because all of their material needs are being met because, again, they’re wealthy,” she said.
This way of thinking was evident, in Ungar-Sargon’s view, in Barrymore’s remarks. “We’re seeing a woman in Drew Barrymore trying to create some sort of idol out of this empty shell that is Kamala Harris, who represents only being female and being Black and Southeast Asian,” she said. “She is simply this empty husk of identities because the Democrats went all in on this to distract from their plunder of the middle class.”
When it comes to the matter of protection, Megyn said Barrymore “wants us to believe that the ‘great protector’ who we apparently all desperately want is Kamala Harris” because “she does not realize we are hurting because of her policies.”
She said it is not unlike the social media posts we see from celebrities in the wake of incidents like the shooting death of Jacob Blake in August 2020. “This reminded me of Reese Witherspoon’s comments after Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted,” Megyn said. “I guarantee you this woman did not watch one minute of that trial.”
The Oscar-winner tweeted at the time that “no one should be able to purchase a semi-automatic weapon, cross state lines and kill [two] people, wound another and go free.” She ended the post with a question: “In what world is this safe … for any of us?”
In Megyn’s view, Witherspoon simply doesn’t get it. “[Here is someone] with undoubtedly her security guards in her mansions and her gates,” she said. “Yet another elite rich woman who has no clue why someone might actually buy a semi-automatic weapon and feel the need to protect others.”
Political Realignment
These examples illustrate part of what is behind the realignment occurring in American politics today. “The Democrats used to represent labor and they abandoned them to cater to the college-educated elite, the educated rich, the cultural elites in Hollywood, and the dependent poor,” Ungar-Sargon said.
While they are busy creating policies with the “top 20 percent” and the “dependent poor on the bottom” in mind, she said there are “70 percent of Americans who want that autonomy, who want the dignity of labor [and] are being left out in the cold because all of the culture that is being produced by Drew Barrymore on her knees elevating Kamala Harris who can only hurt the working class with her Democratic policies.”
Ultimately, Megyn said the “cluelessness” is telling. “It really, truly is amazing to watch these women in their cluelessness about what America actually needs and wants,” she concluded. “[They] have no idea… [and] it’s offensive.”
You can check out Megyn’s interview with Ungar-Sargon by tuning in to episode 780 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.