Remember the TV show “Kids Say the Darndest Things”?
It was great.
Actually, you probably are most familiar with the newer versions, but the original was hosted by Art Linkletter from 1952-1969.
Then the most famous version was the one hosted by Bill Cosby, before everyone found out he was raping all of those women, which kind of soured things afterwards.
But it was a great show and so much fun to see what kids would say about certain things.
CNN thought they’d do their own mini version of that recently when they say down to ask 10-year olds what they think of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
This kid won the entire event:
LIAR!
Smart kid, must have good parents!
To be fair, Collin Rugg reports there were also questions and negative answers about President Trump:
CNN: What’s the first word that pops into you head when you hear the name Kamala Harris?
Child 1: Liar.
CNN: What’s the word that pops into you head when you hear the name Donald Trump?
Child 2: Pure evil.
CNN: Which one do you think is more selfish?
Child 3: Probably Kamala Harris because girls are a little bit dramatic sometimes.
Child 4: Donald Trump, he’s given his life and his heart.
Child 5: Kamala even shook hands with Mr. Trump to greet him before the debate started which is pretty kind when you’re going against your opponent.
Watch the longer clip here:
Here’s more direct from CNN:
It is jarring to hear American kids talk about politics and see the country’s often angry political debate filtered through young people.
When a child is asked for one word to describe former President Donald Trump and comes up with “pure evil,” it suggests a level of division that might surprise the average American.
Researchers found that Democrat-supporting kids drove polarization in a new study for CNN, and the children were more likely to say they wouldn’t be friends with someone who supports Trump. Kids in red states, on the other hand, were more likely to repeat misinformation.
The findings are the result of more than 40 hours of interviews commissioned by CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” to talk politics with 80 elementary schoolers in Arizona, a 2024 battleground state; New Jersey, a blue state; and Texas, a red state.
With their parents’ OK, researchers got the kids’ unfiltered thoughts about the presidential candidates and the election.
CNN is not identifying the students or the schools visited, and this is not a representative public opinion poll, but rather a set of interviews designed to gauge polarization in children.
For this project, Asheley Landrum, an associate professor, child development expert and media psychologist at Arizona State University, worked with Stanford University political science professor Shanto Iyengar, who has already studied polarization in American teens. Landrum asked the elementary schoolers a series of questions, using photographs and visual prompts, to understand how the children feel about the political system.
The questions about the presidential candidates included prompts asking which one would keep them safer, which is more honest and which is more likely to do bad things.
The interviews were first conducted in the spring, when President Joe Biden was running for reelection and the kids were in fourth grade. Most of the same children took part in follow-up interviews in the fall in New Jersey and Texas, after Vice President Kamala Harris had stepped in to be the Democratic nominee and the kids had started fifth grade.
Most of the children in the fall interviews, nearly two-thirds, supported Harris. There was an even split in Texas, a major improvement for Democrats in the red state compared with when Biden was in the race. Nationwide polls of likely voters suggest a much tighter race for the White House and a lead for Trump in Texas.
In September, according to an analysis prepared by Landrum, when kids were asked how much they liked Harris or Trump on a five-point scale, the Democrat-leaning and blue-state kids were more likely to say they really liked Harris and really disliked Trump. Republican-leaning and red-state kids liked Trump but were neutral or even positive about Harris.
When Landrum asked for one word to describe a candidate, the results for Trump ranged from positive – such as from one kid in May: “Go America!” – to extremely negative. There were criticisms of Harris too. “Liar” was one child’s one word to describe her.
Back in May, “three Biden-leaning kids spontaneously brought up Hitler when talking about Donald Trump,” according to Landrum’s analysis.
And if you think I’m going to end the article there without circling back to Bill Cosby, then you haven’t been around here very long….
There is no way I’m going to have an article where I talk about Bill Cosby and not show you perhaps the funniest 4 minutes of comedy ever.
Here is Norm Macdonald in perhaps my favorite bit of his of all time (and yes I’m aware I say that with every Norm clip):
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