Some Dude Snatched Kamala Harris's Mic as She Talked About the Wage Gap

An animal rights activist sporting a messy bun grabbed Sen. Kamala Harris’s microphone just as she prepared to answer a question about income inequality at a recent event.

Video of a San Francisco panel hosted by MoveOn shows moderator Stephanie Valencia beginning to ask Harris a question that starts “On implementation of your first big idea on the gender pay gap,” but before she can finish the question and Harris can answer, Aidan Cook, an animal rights activist from Oakland, runs onstage and grabs her mic. Cook says he’d like to call the audience’s “attention to a much bigger idea.” His, naturally.

Harris calmly looks on before exiting the stage as moderator Karine Jean-Pierre does an admirable job attempting to wrangle the mic back from Temescal Tormund.

On Twitter, Lois Beckett, senior reporter for The Guardian wrote that she asked Cook if he’d considered the “optics” of a white man taking the microphone from a woman of color to insist he had a bigger idea:

“I did,” he said. “I tried to show my profound respect for each of the people onstage.”

Great. I’ve got some big and respectful ideas about that beard, bun, blazer, and sweatshirt combo.