Kamala Harris is not holding back.
In what felt like a natural move in a youth-focused campaign, the Democratic nominee for president made a historic appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast on Sunday—and while there, doubled down on her support for all kinds of families, mothers, and women.
Harris fiercely criticized Republican opponent Donald Trump’s stance and past comments on abortion, but the most powerful part of the interview came when podcast host Alexandra Cooper asked the vice president how she feels about Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s recent remarks about her. For context, Sanders tried to paint Harris in a negative light by saying at a town hall that she (Sanders) stays humble because of her children, but that because Harris has no biological children of her own, she “doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.”
“I feel sorry for her, and I’m going to tell you why,” Harris told Cooper of Sanders. “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, and I think it’s very important for women to lift each other up.”
Harris has two beloved stepchildren, Cole and Ella Emhoff, through her 10-year marriage to second gentleman Doug Emhoff. And this is not the first time in her political career that she has been questioned or attacked by Republicans for not having birthed children. Just look at Trump running mate J.D. Vance’s recent comments ridiculing the “childless cat ladies” he says are running the country into the ground.
Responding to the ongoing criticism, Harris said in the interview: “I feel very strongly, 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 added that she and Emhoff have a “very modern family” and that her relationship with her “two beautiful children,” who refer to her as “Momala,” is sacred.
“I love those kids to death. Family comes in many forms, and I think that increasingly, all of us understand that this is not the 1950s anymore,” Harris said.