Harris punches back at Huckabee Sanders: ‘This is not the 1950s anymore.’
Kamala Harris is punching back at Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders for suggesting that she isn't humble because she doesn't have biological children.
In an interview aired Sunday on the "Call Her Daddy" podcast, the vice president suggested the Arkansas governor's views on family were outdated — and spoke warmly about her own "modern family ," which includes her husband, Doug Emhoff, and his two children from his first marriage, Cole and Ella.
"This is not the 1950s anymore," Harris said. "Families come in all kinds of forms."
Harris' remarks came in response to a question from the podcast's host, Alex Cooper, about comments Huckabee Sanders made last month during a town hall in Flint, Michigan. The Arkansas governor said that her three kids keep her "humble," while "Kamala Harris doesn't have anything keeping her humble."
"I don't think she understands that there are a whole lot of women out here who, one, are not aspiring to be humble," Harris said. "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, in what appeared to be a dig at Huckabee Sanders, Harris added: "I think it's really important for women to lift each other up."
One of Trump's senior campaign advisers, Bryan Lanza, also condemned Huckabee Sanders' comments at the time she made them, calling them "offensive" and describing being a stepmom as a "tough job." And a Sanders spokesperson later said the comments over Harris' humility were referring to the vice president's policy positions.
The comments come amid a broader election-year debate over families and the role of people in society who do not have children. They also underscore Donald Trump's shaky relationship with women voters, particularly as Democrats continue to hammer the former president for his role in appointing three conservative Supreme Court justices key to overturning
Trump's own running made, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, has faced criticism for his past critiques of Harris and other women in leadership positions, who he described in a 2021 Fox News interview as "a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too."
Harris, in the podcast interview, called those comments "mean and mean-spirited."
Trump, for his part, has sought to both defend Vance as well as those who do not have children, telling reporters at the National Association of Black Journalists in July that some "people without the family are far better — they're superior in many cases." He's also tried to soften his position on abortion by declaring that the issue is now in the hands of states and pledging that he would be "great for women and their reproductive rights."
Democrats, meanwhile, have embraced the "childless cat lady" label. When she endorsed Harris last month, Taylor Swift signed her post, "Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady," and included a photo of her and her cat.
