— The ex-wife of Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff on Wednesday defended Vice President Kamala Harris against sexist criticism of her lack of biological children, calling the criticism “unfounded” and expressing her gratitude for the likely Democratic nominee.
“These are baseless attacks. For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been the co-mom of Doug and me,” Kerstin Emhoff said in a press release first provided to CNN. “She is loving, caring, fiercely protective and always there. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her as part of it.”
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Emhoff's statement follows a resurfaced video of Republican vice presidential candidate Senator JD Vance criticizing several public figures, including Harris, Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, as “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are unhappy with their own lives.”
“It's just a basic fact – look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC – the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” Vance Tucker Carlson said in a July 2021 interview.
Kerstin Emhoff, a movie producer, has two children with Doug Emhoff. The vice chairman has said her stepchildren call her “Momala.”
Spokespeople for Vance didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment on his 2021 statement. Vance is the daddy of three children.
Buttigieg, who was criticized together with Harris in Vance's 2021 interview, told CNN's Kaitlan Collins that the remarks got here at a time when he and his husband Chasten “had suffered a pretty heartbreaking setback in our journey to adoption.”
“He couldn't have known that,” Buttigieg said, “but maybe that's why you shouldn't talk about other people's children.” (The Buttigiegs had twins in late 2021.)
Harris and Doug Emhoff married in 2014.
“The thing about blended families,” Harris told CNN in 2020, “is that it works when everyone approaches it in such a way that there is a lot of love to share.”
In a Essay from 2019 in ElleHarris talked about how she has formed an in depth friendship with Kerstin Emhoff and has a blended family. “Kerstin and I have gotten along well and are good friends,” Harris said. “…We sometimes joke that our modern family is almost a little too functional.”
The-CNN-Wire
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