In a live interview on “The Howard Stern Show” on Tuesday afternoon, Vice President Kamala Harris repeatedly sought to reassure host and supporter Howard Stern that there is still hope for the country’s future.
Stern’s hourlong conversation with the Democratic presidential nominee on his Sirius XM show followed the casual, stream-of-consciousness style the seasoned broadcaster has used with countless other politicians and celebrities. In a nod to Harris’ love of the late pop star Prince, Stern played her in with Prince’s “Batdance,” prompting a brief discussion of her and husband Doug Emhoff’s musical tastes — Emhoff is more of a Depeche Mode guy, but Prince is one case where the couple overlap — that gave way to friendly queries about Harris’ feelings about her portrayal on “Saturday Night Live,” the psychological burden of her candidacy, Harris’ upbringing and early career, the stakes of the race, and her policies.
The most common theme, however, was Stern expressing some combination of disbelief and horror at the prospect of a second Donald Trump presidency, and Harris responding with on-message optimism about Americans’ goodness and her determination to do all it takes to win.
When Harris discussed her advice to young people about cultivating a supportive “inner circle” of friends, Stern brought it back to the state of the country.
“It seems like the country is so angry right now,” Stern said.
“We should remember the good,” Harris responded. “And I don’t mean to sound naive, but we have to remember the good — with so many hardworking, good people who I have the great experience of meeting every day.”
At another point in the interview, Stern asked Harris whether she would remain in the country if Trump won.
“He admires strong men, and he gets played by them because he thinks that they’re his friends, and they are manipulating him.”
– Vice President Kamala Harris
“Howard, I’m doing everything I can to make sure he does not win,” Harris replied.
Stern pressed her again on the hypothetical, and Harris refused to bite, pivoting instead to the support she has received from more than 200 former Republican presidential aides.
“We are building a coalition of people that are Republicans, independents, Democrats, libertarians, all stripes of Americans who are coming together to say, ‘You know what? This election is about putting country before party,’” Harris said.
Following Stern’s lament about his poor experience with the U.S. Postal Service during the Trump administration, Harris again circled back to patriotic hopefulness and perseverance.
“But here’s the thing, let’s not throw up our hands. Let’s roll up our sleeves, because this is our country. And you know what? If you love our country, we gotta fight for our country,” she said. “We can’t take our country for granted. I love our country. I love the American people.”
Toward the end of the interview, Stern fretted about the future of freedom across the world if Trump is reelected. “If the lights go out here, it’s going to be a darkness all over the world,” he predicted.
Harris returned to the positive possibilities of the United States’ current role as a global hegemon.
“Howard, we are so important to the rest of the world. We are a role model for what it means to do democracy. So we can look at other countries and our allies and our adversaries and say, ‘These are the principles that must be upheld,’” Harris said. “And while we uphold these principles, we will also be the strongest economy in the world. We will have the most lethal fighting force in the world. All these things coexist, but you’ve got to have a president who appreciates and understands that.”
Harris also used the interview to seize on an excerpt that came out Tuesday from Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book about the Trump presidency. The excerpt said that Trump sent COVID-19 test kits to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his personal use with instructions not to tell anyone. The Trump campaign has vehemently denied Woodward’s claim.
“He admires strong men, and he gets played by them because he thinks that they’re his friends, and they are manipulating him,” Harris said.
“Everybody was scrambling to get these kits — the tests, the COVID test kits — couldn’t get ’em, couldn’t get ’em anywhere,” she added. “And this guy who was president of the United States is sending them to Russia, to a murderous dictator for his personal use.”
Harris’ interview on “The Howard Stern Show,” which has millions of listeners, is part of a larger media blitz that included an interview on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” that aired Monday evening, and an appearance on the daytime talk show “The View” earlier Tuesday.
Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press
The Democratic nominee’s upbeat tone in the interview embodies one of the most pivotal breaks her campaign has made with President Joe Biden’s. Rather than emphasize the dark possibilities of a second Trump term, Harris has preferred to project “joy” and employ mockery to diminish Trump.
Referring to Trump’s refusal to concede the 2020 election, Harris said, “In America, we call that a sore loser. And in this case, this is someone who has already lost, which would say that they are actually already a loser.”
Trump was once a frequent guest on Stern’s talk show, engaging in frank — and sometimes misogynistic — discussions about sex that drew negative scrutiny during his first presidential run.
Stern, a onetime friend of Trump’s — they attended each other’s weddings — publicly supported all of Trump’s Democratic opponents, Hillary Clinton, Biden and now Harris, and has grown increasingly hostile to the former president as the years have worn on. Stern has been open about his fears of the COVID-19 pandemic and support for vaccines, criticizing Trump’s “treasonous” handling of the disease. The veteran radio host interviewed Clinton in 2019 and Biden this past May.
“Yes, I’m voting for you, but I would also vote for that wall over there rather than” Trump, Stern told Harris.
Support Free Journalism
Support HuffPost
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.
Stern has retreated from his shock-jock style and off-color jokes in the past decade and a half, but his outré sense of humor still shined through a few times during the Harris interview. He raved about how his mother, Rae, was “beside herself” to learn Harris would be coming, before joking that she would not remember because of the amount of morphine she is taking.
He also appeared to discourage Trump supporters from voting.
“I just want to encourage anyone who thinks similarly to me to vote. And if you don’t agree with me, do not vote,” he said. “I encourage people not to vote who are thinking in the direction of Putin and all that stuff.”