Kamala Harris mocked over spellbound audience of child actors in NASA video

The US Vice-President has been likened to a comedy character in the hit sitcom Veep, after the truth about a NASA video emerges.

Kamala Harris has been mocked after a video of the US vice-president telling youngsters about the wonders of space was found to have involved child actors.

The video, released on YouTube last week, is the first of a planned series entitled Get Curious with Vice President Harris. Featuring an appearance by the NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough, who has flown the Space Shuttle and commanded the International Space Station, it showed Harris speaking with a rapt and enthusiastic group of children.

Kamala Harris and child actors in her video.

This week, however, it emerged that the spellbound audience were actors who had auditioned for the role. One of them, 13-year-old Trevor Bernardino from California, told KSBW TV that he had submitted a monologue and been interviewed for a role in the series. “A week later, my agent called me and he’s like, ‘Hey Trevor, you booked it,’ ” Bernardino said.

Conservative media outlets have leapt on the admission. “Our VP does not know how to talk to real children,” one critic wrote.

The video was released to coincide with World Space Week. The children talked to Kimbrough while he was on the International Space Station via a video link; he dispatched them on a scavenger hunt to build a telescope before the group met Harris, 56.

The vice-president was shown discussing her love of science. Wide-eyed with enthusiasm, she said that the children were “going to learn so much”.

Bernardino said that regardless of his role, meeting the vice-president was the highlight of the experience. “There’s nothing can top that,” he said. “She’s super-charismatic and made me feel like one of her peers.”

The children’s enthusiasm was called into question, however, once it emerged that they were hand-picked professionals. Some compared the incident to Veep, the hit comedy created by Armando Iannucci and starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a hapless vice-president. A White House official told Fox News that Harris’s office had not been involved in the casting.

Harris, who ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, dropping out before the first votes were cast, has been criticised by opponents for being socially awkward and struggling to connect with ordinary people.

Julia-Louise Dreyfus in Veep.

She has faced a barrage of attacks from conservatives with an eye on the next presidential election and beyond, when she appears certain to try for the Democratic nomination again should Joe Biden step down or be incapacitated. Her supporters blamed the criticism on endemic misogyny and racism.

The Times