MoveOn had their "Big Ideas" forum this weekend during the California Democratic Party convention, and things got really weir...
MoveOn had their "Big Ideas" forum this weekend during the California Democratic Party convention, and things got really weird when a member of the audience decided to come take the mic and say his piece. That is, took it right out of the hands of 2020 Democrat Sen. Kamala Harris.
NBC News tweeted about it shortly after it happened, characterizing the man as a "protester" for some reason. Later, after the incident, a Boston Globe reporter tweeted that he called himself an "animal rights activist' when speaking with reporters.
Watch as the liberal white male stomps across the stage past two women of color and steals the mic from a third to say he has a "much bigger idea", man-bun and Gandalf-beard bouncing the whole way.
A reporter from the Guardian later interviewed man-bun, who is actually named Aidan Cook, about the "optics" of his action. She also, for better or worse, included a close-up photo.
I asked Aidan Cook, an animal rights activist who jumped onstage to interrupt Kamala Harris, if he had considered the optics of literally taking the microphone away from women of color.— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) June 1, 2019
“I did,” he said. “I tried to show my profound respect for each of the people onstage.” pic.twitter.com/uyMpV82lVP
""I tried to show my profound respect for each of the people onstage," he said, after which actual physical question marks floated in the sky around him.
The question that Sen. Harris was answering at the time? It was about the so-called "gender gap" in pay in the United States. The Senator, for her part, handled the whole thing very well.