While Kamala Harris was preparing to accept the presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, another spectacle was going down in Ohio. Hulk Hogan — the controversy-plagued wrestling icon — was chugging beer on stage and fist-pumping the crowd to promote his new brand, “Real American Beer,” on Aug. 19. Things quickly degenerated when he grabbed the mic and jokingly threatened to “body slam” the vice president and then mocked her Indian heritage.
The video obtained by TMZ shows Hulk Hogan stirring up a hornet’s nest of hate as he plied a rowdy crowd with free beer at the Thirsty Cowboy in Medina. The clip has spread like wildfire online, with one post on X racking up 7 million views.
“Do you want to get crazy? Do you want me to throw more beers out?” the 71-year-old wrestler asked a packed room of drunken revelers from the stage.
“Do you want me to body slam somebody? Want me to body slam Kamala Harris? I said, do you want me to body slam Kamala Harris? Do you want me to drop the leg on Kamala?” he yelled to the cheering crowd, referring to one of his signature wrestling moves.
His rant continued as he questioned Kamala’s Indian heritage by invoking an old racist gesture related to Native Americans. “Is Kamala a chameleon? Is she Indian?” he asked before raising his hand and saying “How” in a mocking way. The Lakota tribe uses the word “háu” as a greeting, but it has been anglicized in pop culture and used to stereotype all Indigenous tribes.
Hogan also mispronounces Harris’ first name throughout the entire video.
“Hulk Hogan just threatened and racially attacked Kamala Harris,” wrote one wrestling fan on X.
Harris’ father, Donald J. Harris, is Jamaican American, and her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, is an immigrant from India. Unfortunately, the Democratic presidential nominee has frequently been the target of racist attacks from Trump supporters like Hulk Hogan, who recently gave a speech praising Trump at the Republican National Convention.
But Hogan seems to be on a losing streak. News came out the day after his Ohio appearance that his upcoming biopic was canned by director Todd Phillips (of “Joker” and “Old School” fame). “The Hulkster” was set to star actor Chris Hemsworth as the wrestling champion and had been in the works since 2019. “I love what we were trying to do, but that’s not going to come together for me,” Phillips told Variety.
Hogan has a long history of trash-talking and only sometimes suffering the consequences. After an audio tape emerged of a racist, N-word-laden rant in 2015, he was fired by World Wrestling Entertainment, though his attorney claimed he resigned. The audio was from eight years prior and showed the wrestler repeatedly using a racist slur in reference to his daughter Brooke Hogan’s dating life.
At the time, WWE scrubbed all mentions of him from its website, removed him from the WWE Hall of Fame, and pulled all Hulk-related merchandise from its shop. After the public shaming, Hogan issued an apology for his tirade and was angling to be reinstated. A few years later, Mark Henry, a Hall of Famer and Olympic weightlifter, called on Hogan to specifically apologize to Black wrestlers in order to make a full return to the WWE, but Hogan refused, saying, “I totally agree, but not to the Black wrestlers, to all the wrestlers.” In 2018, however, he was reinstated into the Hall of Fame.
This time around, he blamed his ramblings on the alcohol, saying, “That was not me. That was the beer talking,” yet he seemed to recognize he crossed the line yet again, as he remarked to someone onstage with him, “I’m gonna get heat for that one, brother.”
