Speaking on a popular podcast aimed at young women, Vice President Kamala Harris took issue with former president Donald Trump calling himself a “protector” of women and also responded to attacks on her stepfamily by Republican Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Harris made the remarks on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, in an expansive interview with host Alex Cooper. The podcast has millions of listeners, many of them young women — a group Harris hopes will mobilize to turn out on Nov. 5.
The interview touched on both Harris’s policies and her identity, and the vice president frequently repeated her well-worn campaign lines. But she also addressed the swipe Sanders made during a Trump event in mid-September when she remarked: “My kids keep me humble. Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.”
During the podcast, released Sunday afternoon, Harris addressed Sanders’s remarks and other affronts by Republicans on her identity, which she said reflected a 1950s caricature of a family.
“I feel sorry for (Sanders) and I’m going to tell you why. Because I don’t think she understands that there are a whole lot of women out here who one, are not aspiring to be humble; two, a whole lot of women out here who have a lot of love in their life, family in their life, and children in their life,” Harris said.
In remarks before the interview, Cooper told listeners that she “went back and forth” with the decision on whether to bring up politics or interview politicians, because she prefers to focus on “women and the day-to-day issues that we face.”
Cooper added that her team reached out to Trump to be interviewed on her show. “If he also wants to have a meaningful, in-depth conversation of women’s rights in this country, then he is welcome on ‘Call Her Daddy’ anytime,” she said before the 40-minute interview.
Harris also took aim at comments made by Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) about “childless cat ladies” who he said don’t have a serious investment in America’s future.
“I just think it’s mean and mean-spirited,” Harris said. “I think that most Americans want leaders who understand that the measure of their strength is not based on who you beat down; the real measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you lift up.”
Harris held her relationships as an example of a “modern family.” She is a child of divorced parents and the matriarch of a blended family. Her marriage to Doug Emhoff is both interracial and interreligious (Harris is Baptist and Emhoff is Jewish).
“We each have our family by blood and then we have our family by love. And I have both. And I consider it to be a real blessing,” she said. “And I have two beautiful children: Cole and Ella, who call me ‘Momala.’ We have a very modern family, my husband’s ex-wife is a friend of mine.”
The conversation repeatedly turned to Trump, and to the presidential candidates’ competing views on abortion access in America. Harris called his false assertion that, in some states, babies are executed after birth a “boldfaced lie.”
And she said it is false that Trump is a self-described protector of women, delving into a familiar attack line on his successful efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case guaranteeing a constitutional right to an abortion.
At a campaign event in Pennsylvania in September, Trump said that he would save women from loneliness and fear, and that they’ll no longer have to even think about abortion.
“You will no longer be abandoned, lonely or scared. You will no longer be in danger. … You will no longer have anxiety from all of the problems our country has today,” Trump said. “You will be protected, and I will be your protector.”
On the podcast, Harris countered that Trump had made life more difficult for women, especially those making an often-searing decision to terminate a pregnancy. She spoke of the increasing hardships faced by women who need abortion care, including one woman who died as a result of new abortion restrictions.
“This is the same guy that is now saying that? This is the same guy that said women should be punished for having abortions? This is the same guy who uses the same kind of language he does to describe women?” Harris asked rhetorically.