In a new interview with Call Her Daddy podcast host Alex Cooper, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at length about her relationship with her “very modern family,” opening up about helping to raise her stepchildren and being a child of divorce herself.
In an episode released on Sunday, Cooper brought up the comments made by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders at a Trump rally in September—again criticizing the vice president for not having biological children, despite her role as stepmother to her husband Doug Emhoff’s two children, Cole and Ella Emhoff.
“So, my kids keep me humble,” the Arkansas governor told the crowd at a Trump rally in Michigan in September. “Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble,” she continued to a chorus of boos from Trump supporters.
“There are a whole lot of women out here who, one, are not aspiring to be humble,” Harris told Cooper. “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.”
Sanders’ comments echoed those from Republican vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance, who has faced criticism for comments in the past calling Democratic leadership “childless cat ladies.”
The Democratic nominee said she “enjoyed” the direction the conversation has gone since Vance’s controversial comments, and used the opportunity to discuss her relationships with her family.
“We 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. And I have two beautiful children, Cole and Ella, who call me Mamala. We have a very modern family.” Harris also called her husband’s ex-wife, Kerstin Emhoff, “a friend of mine.”
“I’m a child of divorced parents and when I started dating Doug, my husband, I was very thoughtful and sensitive to making sure that until I knew that our relationship was something that was gonna be real,” Harris continued. “I didn’t want to form a relationship with the kids and then walk away from that relationship.”
