Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t given many long-form interviews during her presidential campaign but during an appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast, she discussed reproductive rights, and dismissed criticisms about not having biological children.
In response to jabs from JD Vance about “childless cat ladies,” or Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders slamming Harris for not having biological children to “keep her humble,” Harris has something to say about that.
“I don’t think she understands that there are a whole lot of women out here who, one, are not aspiring to be humble,” she said in the episode released Sunday. “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 really important for women to lift each other up.”
“We have our family by blood and then we have our family by love. And I have both,” she said, referring to stepchildren Cole and Ella, husband Doug Emhoff‘s children from his previous marriage. “We have a very modern family. My husband’s ex-wife is a friend of mine.”
“Family comes in many forms and I think that increasingly all of us understand that this is not the 1950s anymore. Families come in all kinds of shapes and forms and they’re family nonetheless.”
Before the interview began, host Alex Cooper said that she wrestled with whether to host a presidential candidate on the podcast, which averages around 5 million listeners a week. She has also, she said, invited Republican nominee Donald Trump to appear on the show, saying, “if he also wants to have a meaningful in-depth conversation about women’s rights in this country, then he’s welcome on Call Her Daddy anytime.”
“At the end of the day, I couldn’t see a world in which one of the main conversations in this election is women and I’m not a part of it,” Cooper, 30, said of having Harris on the show.
And Harris, for her part, unpacked the importance of reproductive rights and safe abortions, reminded the world that she was the first sitting vice president or president to ever go to a reproductive healthcare clinic, and dropped some real zingers in response to criticisms she’s received along the way, characterizing her opposition as “just mean and mean-spirited.”
“There’s so many forces that come in very different ways that are just trying to make people feel small and alone,” she said.
Cooper’s platform is an important one in reaching younger female voters, who make up the majority of Call Her Daddy’s audience. As Cooper said, “I’m probably not the one to be having the fracking conversation, but the conversation I know I am qualified to have is the one surrounding women’s bodies and how we are treated and valued in this country.”
In a 2023 interview with Vanity Fair, Cooper described herself as “almost just a vessel to ask the questions” on behalf of her listeners.
“You can look at my career to know what I care about,” Harris said. “I care about making sure that people are entitled to and receive the freedoms that they are due. I care about lifting people up and making sure that you are protected from harm. I care about tapping into the ambitions and the aspirations of people knowing that we are capable of so much.”
She characterized reproductive freedom as an extension of “the basic right any individual of whatever gender has to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do, or even voting.”
“I know that there’s a real feeling that, well, what does it matter? Does my voice matter?” she said. “But a lot of my push to kind of hopefully convince people that they should vote is because you should never let anybody take your power from you. And voting is one of the ways that you use your voice to determine who your government will be and what your future will be by your government.”
Harris’s tour of non-traditional media outlets continues in the upcoming week, with scheduled stops at The View, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and an interview with Howard Stern on her public docket.
