Vice President Kamala Harris spoke of strategies to curtail sexual and other types of domestic violence during an interview on a wildly popular podcast Sunday, but the accusations against her husband that surfaced last week never came up.
In Sunday’s episode of “Call Her Daddy,” Harris, 59, passionately recalled how she began her career as a prosecutor inspired to take on domestic abusers, but host Alex Cooper, 30, declined to press the veep on the thorny topic of her husband allegedly drunkenly hitting an ex-girlfriend, avoiding the issue altogether.
“The first thing that I would say to anyone going through it is tell someone that you trust. Don’t, don’t quietly suffer. You have done nothing wrong,” Harris said about advice she would give to victims of domestic violence.
“Often, the abuser will tell her that if she tells then something worse will happen, and that is usually wrong. And know that there are people that want you to be safe.”
While hearkening back to her efforts to combat abuse as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, Harris reiterated the harrowing situation that first inspired her to become a prosecutor.
One of her best friends in high school, Wanda Kagan, had told Harris she was being abused by her stepfather. That motivated Harris to want to defend others who were suffering from similar terror.
“We have to talk about it. Child sexual assault is something that far more people than the public discourse about it acknowledges,” Harris said while emphasizing the need to “not stigmatize it.”
“Abuse of anyone is something we should all take seriously, as opposed to saying it’s not our business. It’s something that we have to agree should not happen.”
Key to making the US a safer country for women is economics, Harris argued.
“When a woman, and in particular if she has children, if she is economically reliant on her abuser, she’s less likely to leave,” she said. “Most women will endure whatever personal, physical pain they must in order to make sure their kids have a roof over their head or food.”
Left unmentioned during the interview were the shocking accusations against the second gentleman Doug Emhoff from three friends of one of his ex-girlfriends, who claimed he became intoxicated and slapped her back in May 2012, as reported by the Daily Mail.
His reps later gave a flat denial to those accusations.
“This report is untrue,” an Emhoff spokesperson later told Semafor, adding that “any suggestion that he would or ever hit a woman is false.”
Back in August, Emhoff fessed up to having an affair during his first marriage, after the outlet reported that he cheated on her and got the nanny pregnant.
At times on the campaign trail, Harris has dubbed her rival, former President Donald Trump a “predator.” The GOP presidential nominee has faced a number of sexual misconduct allegations, all of which he has denied.
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Trump was found liable by a jury for defamation and sexual abuse against writer E. Jean Carroll. The 78-year-old is appealing that verdict.
During her podcast appearance, Harris laced into Trump for appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, ripping him for telling women, “I will be your protector.”
She also bristled when asked about Trump’s suggestion that she supports abortion “right up until birth, and even after birth.”
“That is so outrageously inaccurate, and it’s so insulting to suggest that would be happening and that women would be doing that. It’s not happening anywhere,” she said. “This guy is full of lies.”
Harris has often demurred when asked about the limitations she would enact on abortion, claiming that she would merely restore the policy first established in Roe v. Wade. Prior to the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, Supreme Court precedent technically did not set gestational limits and instead deferred to the states and Congress.
At the moment, there are just over half a dozen states and Washington, DC, that do not impose gestational limitations on abortion, according to Axios.
Fewer than 1% of abortions took place in the US during or after 21 weeks of gestation back in 2021, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Pro-life activists argue that data on late-term abortions is incomplete.
Killing babies after birth is illegal, but Trump appears to be referencing “comfort care” that abortion doctors sometimes administer to a baby that survives a botched abortion procedure — which is generally thought to be rare.
In the early 2000s, Congress passed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act to provide protections for fetuses and babies that survive abortions. Trump has blasted Democrats for scuttling efforts to strengthen those laws during his first term.
Harris also addressed GOP vice presidential hopeful JD Vance’s swipe at “childless cat ladies,” which she called “mean and mean-spirited” as well as Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ diss at her for not having biological children.
“[There are] 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,” she rebutted.
“Call Her Daddy” was the second-best performing podcast on Spotify last year behind Joe Rogan’s podcast and topped the charts among women.
The podcast is known for featuring discussions about sex and advice for women.
