Vice President Kamala Harris was emphatic when asked whether she has children after Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-AR) implied earlier this week that Harris is not humble because she does not have offspring of her own.
In an “autocomplete interview” with tech magazine WIRED, Harris was asked to respond to common Google searches about her, including whether she has children.
“Yes, I have two,” Harris said. “Cole and Ella became my cherished children. Doug, my husband, I was very clear with him that when we started dating, I wanted to see how this thing was going to go before I would meet Cole and Ella.”
Harris married Los Angeles entertainment lawyer, now second gentleman, Doug Emhoff in 2014, becoming stepmother to his two children from his first marriage with Kerstin Mackin. Emhoff and Mackin divorced in 2009 and remain on good terms.
Harris noted that it was “important” to her to “make sure that when I developed a relationship with the kids that it would be lasting” based on her own experience as a child of divorce. Harris’s parents, Donald Harris and Shyamala Gopalan, divorced when she was 7.
“I love those kids to pieces,” Harris said of Cole and Ella. “They are my children. And I’m very proud of them.”
In the interview, Harris was also asked about gun ownership after reiterating during last week’s debate and this week’s livestream event with Oprah Winfrey that she, herself, was a gun owner. Second Amendment rights are a critical issue among some independent voters to whom she is attempting to appeal.
“We will not take anybody’s guns away,” she said. “We also need to have reasonable gun safety laws. I believe that we need an assault weapons ban. We need universal background checks. We need red flag laws. We can support the Second Amendment, as I do, and also agree that we need some reasonable laws.”
One of the last prompts presented to Harris was the Google search, “Kamala Harris laughing,” as former President Donald Trump workshops nicknames for her, such as “Laffin’ Kamala.”
“I love to laugh,” she said. “It’s really important to be able to laugh at yourself, laugh with folks. There are obviously moments that require serious thought and serious approaches, but I hope that everybody has a moment to laugh from time to time.”
Harris’s interview with WIRED comes amid criticism over a lack of press access to her, with the vice president’s campaign prioritizing sit-downs with social media influencers and local news outlets rather than national counterparts. Harris’s first major interview, though, was with CNN last month before her debate against Trump.
Earlier this week, during an appearance with Trump in Flint, Michigan, Huckabee Sanders quipped that her three children “keep me humble.”
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“Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble,” Huckabee Sanders said. “You would think after four years of straight failure, she would know a little humility. Unfortunately, she doesn’t.”
Huckabee Sanders has encountered scrutiny over her comments as Trump and his vice presidential nominee, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), try to reach out to women in the aftermath of the Supreme Court‘s overturning of abortion precedent Roe v. Wade.
