A CNN segment in which children talk about the presidential election has supporters of former President Donald Trump in stitches, as students are asked to react to a photo of Vice President Kamala Harris.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper and his production team teamed up with an Arizona State University psychologist and a political scientist to interview fourth and fifth graders about the upcoming election.
When a child is asked to describe Harris in one word, he answers, “Liar” without hesitation.
When a girl is asked which candidate would be more selfish, one girl answers “probably her” and points to Harris, noting that “girls are a little dramatic sometimes.”
CNN article on children’s reaction to the presidential election
The children’s responses varied, in part due to their location, as the study interviewed students from New Jersey and Texas.
When a black girl was asked if she wanted to see a black woman become president, she responded that “it would be nice,” but that “my vote is still a little bit for Trump.”
Another girl noted that Harris was “pretty and stuff, but I don’t think a woman is fit to be president,” and noted that a male president would be “stronger.”
Other students believed Trump would be “brave” and “tougher” than Harris because he survived an assassination attempt.
The feature also included an ’emoji chart’ to describe how they felt about each candidate, which yielded mixed results for both candidates.
But the video also included some damaging assessments of Trump from some of the children, with one child describing him as a “convicted felon.”
Cooper noted that CNN received “more extreme” responses from children in the blue state of New Jersey who described Trump as Hitler or a dictator, or even mentioned January 6 as a way to disqualify him.
‘The study found that these Democratic-leaning children were about nine times more likely to express negative emotions about Donald Trump than Republican-leaning children about Kamala Harris, CNN, describing Trump as a ‘polarizing figure’ in American households.