Kamala Harris to Howard Stern: ‘Trump is a Threat to Gay Rights’
The Democratic presidential nominee warned the radio host that a Trump presidency would likely serve a devastating blow to same-sex marriage.
Vice President Kamala Harris recently appeared on The Howard Stern Show to speak about her presidential campaign and pitch herself to the radio host’s massive audience. She opened up about various topics, including the risk that a future Trump administration would pose to same-sex couples.
During last Tuesday’s hour-long interview, Stern, a supporter of LGBTQ rights, mentioned how Senate Republicans had refused to consider any nominees for the U.S. Supreme Court after the death of Antonin Scalia, denying President Barack Obama the chance to nominate a liberal justice to the court. The high court is now skewed 6-3 in favor of Republican appointees — including three named by Trump — and, should Trump win again, could skew even further right.
Harris noted that the court’s rulings on abortion indicate a willingness to allow the government to intervene and interfere with people’s personal decision-making, to which Stern noted that “gay rights are next,” referring to a possible overturn of Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that struck down state-level bans on same-sex marriage.
“Clarence Thomas said it,” Harris said, referring to Thomas’s concurring opinion in the case that overturned the precedent set by Roe v. Wade in terms of the ability to access an abortion.
“Here’s the crazy thing to me,” Stern replied. “Who doesn’t have gay people in your life? Whether it’s your kid, whether it’s your best friend…. The genie is out of the bottle, guys.”
Harris seized the opportunity to explain her longtime support for marriage equality, noting how she’d performed some of the first same-sex marriages in California in 2004 as the San Francisco District Attorney after then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom declared same-sex marriage legal in the city.
Raising the possibility that at least two seats on the high court could become open in the next four years, Harris noted that whoever is named to those seats will make decisions that impact Americans for generations to come, in part because Supreme Court justices have lifetime terms.
She predicted that a Supreme Court with additional conservatives would be committed to limiting as many freedoms as possible for Americans.
“Understand, if Donald Trump were to get another term — most of the legal scholars think that there’s going to be maybe even two more seats that will be up,” she said. “That means — think about it — not for the next four years, for the next 40 years, for the next four generations of your family, what might be a Supreme Court that is about restricting your rights, versus expanding your rights?”
Harris’s appearance came during a media blitz that saw the Democratic nominee appear on ABC’s The View, CBS’s 60 Minutes, the podcast Call Her Daddy, and Stephen Colbert’s late-night talk show, in an attempt to introduce herself to voters.
Throughout the Stern interview, the former shock jock and Harris talked about a range of topics, from national security to immigration to her personal biography to her taste in music, as she sought to appeal, in particular, to the white male listeners of Stern’s show who might not otherwise consume media from outlets covering the presidential race with regularity.
Harris blasted Trump for his comment that he would be “dictator on day one” and called him a “sore loser” for still refusing to recognize the results of the 2020 election, which he lost.
She knocked Trump as “an unserious man” frequently throughout the interview, noting that inflammatory and untrue statements are part of the former president’s stock and trade. Even when recounting her televised debate against the former president, Harris said she was surprised how outlandish some of Trump’s assertions were, including the outright lie that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio were abducting and eating people’s cats and dogs.
“There were a couple of moments at least in the debate where it was surreal, honestly,” Harris said. “This was a very serious moment to earn the votes of the American people, and he was talking about things that were factually untrue and quite ridiculous.”
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