Harris mocked for using child actors in film
US Vice President’s space video branded ‘fake’ after it emerges five youngsters auditioned to take part
‘We’re going to learn so much. You’re going to literally see the craters on the moon with your own eyes’
KAMALA HARRIS was ridiculed last night as it emerged youngsters who appeared with her in a video to promote space exploration were professional child actors who auditioned for the parts.
Republicans lambasted the Vice President for taking part in a “fake” and “cringeworthy” video.
Ms Harris was appointed by Joe Biden as chairwoman of the National Space Council in May amid suggestions she was not being given enough to do. The council helps to shape US space and national security policy, and was revived under Donald Trump after lapsing for two decades.
In a nine-minute Youtube video called Get Curious With Vice President Kamala Harris to mark National Space Week, Ms Harris speaks with five children.
One of them, Trevor Bernardino, 13, a child actor from Carmel, California, later revealed he had sent an application to a production company, then had an interview with a director.
He told a local TV station in California: “Then after that, like a week later, my agent called me and was like ‘Hey Trevor, you booked it’.”
The child actor said he had only been told he would be interviewing someone important in Washington. He said: “Me, my Mom, Dad, we were speculating who could be this important that we meet them in DC and we get to go on a cool trip and film.”
In the video Trevor and four other child actors were taken to the US Naval Observatory, which is the Vice President’s residence, to meet Ms Harris.
Carlo Bernardino, Trevor’s father, told the Washington Examiner: “He’s a child actor. He’s been trying to do this type of thing for a while.
“And so he has a manager, and an agent, in LA and they send him castings.
“This was a casting call. All five of them are actors.”
The short film was produced by Sinking Ship Entertainment, an Emmy award-winning Canadian production company based in Toronto. It was filmed in August as the Taliban were heading for Kabul and the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan loomed.
In the video Ms Harris tells the child actors: “To think about so much that’s out there that we still have to learn, like, I love that. I love that. And so, I’m very excited about the Space Council.
“We’re going to learn so much. You’re going to literally see the craters on the moon with your own eyes. With your own eyes, I’m telling you.”
In addition to the use of child actors her performance was mocked by Republicans who compared it to Veep, the TV show starring Julia Louis-dreyfus as a hapless Vice President.
Donald Trump Jr said: “Just when you thought the most fake human being in the history of the world couldn’t get any more phoney there’s this … Her commitment to cringe is truly impressive!”
Tim Murtaugh, Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign communications director, said: “A video with Kamala Harris features child actors, with agents, auditions, and all. But here’s the punchline: The project is being produced by a company called Sinking Ship. You couldn’t make it up.”
It was the latest in a series of incidents which have seen Ms Harris struggling in polls.
Missteps have included delaying going to the Mexico border after Mr Biden put her in charge of the migration crisis. There have also been reports of dysfunction in her office.
Last month Ms Harris hired a veteran Washington crisis communications expert.