Was this a gaffe or a Freudian slip?

In a Baltimore address promoting the Biden Administration’s energy policy, Kamala Harris said the following:

"When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water." [emphasis added]

VP HARRIS: "When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breath clean air and drink clean water." pic.twitter.com/yhZzDmkeAM

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) July 14, 2023

As Nick Pope of the Daily Caller News Foundation reports,

The White House clarified that Harris misspoke and had intended to say “pollution” rather than “population,” referencing the official speech transcript posted to the White House’s website in communication with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Sure enough, the corrected transcript now reads:

When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population [pollution], more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water.  (Applause.)

Of course, I suppose that anyone can confuse the 4 syllables of “population” with the 3 syllables of “pollution” because, after all, they both begin with po and end in tion. But as those who believe in Freudian slips aver, often the word substitution indicates inner thoughts that are taboo to mention.

It’s no secret that some powerful figures believe the world has too many people, that we are a “cancer on the planet.”   

The haste to claim that VP Harris, the next in line to the presidency as Joe Biden visibly deteriorates, didn’t mean what she said reminds me of a now-notorious gaffe (or Freudian slip) that Bill Gates made in 2010:

“First, we’ve got population,” he said during the talk organized by TED, a non-profit organization devoted to spreading ideas. “The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent. But there, we see an increase of about 1.3.”

Just about every “fact checker” you ever heard of rushed to explain that he didn’t mean that vaccines could lower population by 10 or 15 percent, which is what he said.  If you search Google for “ Gates depopulation” the first tranche of links has about 10 such “fact checks”, many invoking QAnon and “conspiracy theory.” Never forget that taking people at their word is a conspiracy theory if you have the wrong politics.

I tend to go with the theory that Kamala was a case of a slip of the tongue, merely because I gather she has slipped her tongue many times to great career advantage.

Photo credit: YouTube screengrab (cropped)