Possible running mate for Kamala Harris attacked for promotional video in China
- US Senator Mark Kelly, the potential Democratic vice-presidential nominee, draws social media scorn for a nine-year-old video of him pitching vitamin franchises.
In 2015, the former US astronaut Mark Kelly made a grand entrance onto a stage in China, riding a motorcycle with American and Chinese flags displayed on its handlebars.
“I took Shaklee vitamins and the Shaklee rehydration drink while in orbit aboard the space shuttle,” Kelly, now a Democratic US senator from Arizona since 2020, told his audience during his sales pitch for would-be Shaklee franchisees.
Nine years later, in a highly charged US election year – where any association with China could jeopardise a politician’s ambitions for higher office – a minute-long video of that appearance is circulating on social media amid reports that US Vice-President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, might select Kelly as her running mate.
Kelly is reportedly competing with three Democratic governors – Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Tim Walz of Minnesota and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania – for the selection as vice-presidential candidate.
After the video resurfaced, several supporters of the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on X, a social media platform owned by the billionaire Elon Musk who has himself endorsed Trump, castigated Kelly, one calling him a “sell-out” to China.
Shaklee is a California-based manufacturer and multilevel marketing distributor of nutritional supplements. Starting in 1993, it supplied Nasa, the US space agency, with a customised version of its rehydration beverage until the end of the Nasa shuttle programme in 2011.