This is everything that’s wrong with beltway journalism in one little story:
KAMALA HARRIS is never missing her AirPods. That’s because she’s wary of them.
While a growing number of consumers are going wireless, the vice president is sticking with the classics. She has long felt that Bluetooth headphones are a security risk. As a result, Harris insists on using wired headphones, three former campaign aides told West Wing Playbook.
That caution has continued since the election.
In the oft meme-d video of Harris calling JOE BIDEN last November to congratulate him on winning the election (“We did it, Joe!”), she can be seen holding the tangle of wires from her headphones. In television interviews with MSNBC’s JOY REID last December and the co-hosts of ABC’s The VIEW in September, Harris is jacked in with wired headphones, as well. After casting the tie-breaking Senate vote on the American Rescue Plan in March, reporters captured Harris with wired headphones in hand. And during the campaign, she filmed campaign videos with the retro coils falling from her ears.
Second gentleman DOUG EMHOFF, by contrast, has not had such anxieties. He sported AirPods in 2019 and has since upgraded them.
While wired headphones have re-emerged as a hip vintage accessory among Gen Z, Harris’ embrace of them is less about fashion than caution. Former aides say that the vice president has long been careful about security and technology — with some describing it as prudent and others suggesting it’s a bit paranoid.
It’s a recurring theme. An aide on her 2016 Senate bid said Harris often preferred texting to email for security reasons. And another former aide when she was attorney general in California said that when a person arrived for a meeting, staff were instructed not to allow them to wait in Harris’ office alone. Instead, the person was asked to wait outside.
That caution and vigilance has not stood in the way of Harris’ meteoric rise to the vice presidency — the first woman of color to do so.
But still, should someone who travels with the nuclear football be spending time untangling her headphone wires? The American people deserve answers!
She is 100% correct to be wary of bluetooth. Anyone in her position should be. My God. And yet here they are once more portraying her as some kind of paranoid weirdo because … well, that the Kewl kidz, mean girl narrative and they’re sticking to it.
Apparently, these journalists don’t know how insecure bluetooth is which should be a warning to any sources who wish their contacts to remain anonymous.
By the way, you may notice one name in that group above which makes sense hen you consider one of them is the guy who wrote this:
This is Village 2.0. Not new and not improved.