In an hourlong podcast appearance published on Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at length about her personal patriotism, her leadership philosophy and how she views the 2024 version of former President Donald Trump as more “unstable and unhinged” than the man who ran for president in 2016 and 2020. 

As she has with increasing frequency on the campaign trail in recent weeks, Harris portrayed her Republican rival as self-invested and more concerned with evening the score with his political enemies than with helping the American people. She also laid the blame for abortion bans and restrictions at his feet, calling post-Roe v. Wade developments “a health care crisis.”


What You Need To Know

  • Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at length in a podcast published Monday about her personal patriotism, her leadership philosophy and how she views the 2024 version of former President Donald Trump as more “unstable and unhinged” than the man who ran for president in 2016 and 2020

  • As she has with increasing frequency on the campaign trail in recent weeks, Harris portrayed her Republican rival as self-invested and more concerned with evening the score with his political enemies than with helping the American people

  • Harris also said that her central values as a leader are “fairness and justice,” spoke in detail about her upbringing and the lessons her mother taught her about leadership, and explained her belief that Democrats need to fight for the country they want, “not fighting for the sake of fighting”
  • Harris also appeared on football Hall of Famer Shannon Sharpe's podcast on Monday, continuing to hammer home the message that Trump is "full-time focused on himself" and walking listeners through the former president's long history of antagonism of and false claims about Black Americans

 

“This is not 2016 or 2020. He is also increasingly unstable and unhinged,” Harris told Brené Brown, a researcher and best-selling author who focuses on leadership and “vulnerability.” 

“I asked people to imagine — we can all picture the Oval Office. You’ve seen it on TV — imagine the Oval Office in your head. Just imagine it on January 20th, 2025. If Donald Trump is sitting there, he will be stewing over his enemies list,” the vice president added.

Harris said as much again on Monday before boarding her plane at Maryland’s Joint Base Andrews to head to Michigan for a day of campaigning, telling members of the press that his Madison Square Garden rally — ladened with racist insults and vitriol toward political opponents — was evidence that Trump is “focused and actually fixated on his grievances, on himself and on dividing our country and it is not in any way something that will strengthen the American family, the American worker.”

On the podcast, “Unlocking Us,” which was recorded in Texas on Friday, Harris referenced the warning from Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, former four star Marine Gen. John Kelly, that Trump is a fascist and other former administration officials who have defected from their old boss — including former Vice President Mike Pence and two of his defense secretaries. She called Kelly’s warning “a 911 call to the American people” and said Trump’s repeated reference to retaliating against the “enemy within,” a line he defended in New York on Sunday, “harkens back to McCarthyism.”

(Trump has denied Kelly's claims, accusing the former Marine general of having "made up a story" and calling him a "lowlife.")

Harris also said that her central values as a leader are “fairness and justice,” spoke in detail about her upbringing and the lessons her mother taught her about leadership, and explained her belief that Democrats need to fight for the country they want, “not fighting for the sake of fighting.”

“I know this is going to sound corny, but I love our country,” Harris said. “I believe in the promise of America. I am empirical evidence of the promise of America. I know what we can do.”

“On democracy, look, I think there’s a duality to its nature, right? On one hand, strength. When a democracy is intact, what it does to protect the rights and the freedoms and the liberties of its people. Incredible strength,” she continued. “On the other hand, incredibly fragile. It will only be as strong as our willingness to fight for it.”

One of those freedoms worth fighting for, Harris said, was access to reproductive health care.

“The notion that in the United States of America, in this year of our Lord 2024, that women don't have the right to make decisions about their own body. I mean, what could be more fundamental?” Harris said. “Donald Trump, through his decision to put those three members on the Supreme Court to undo Roe, has created a health care crisis in America.”

Harris also appeared on football Hall of Famer Shannon Sharpe's podcast on Monday, continuing to hammer home the message that Trump is "full-time focused on himself" and walking listeners through the former president's long history of antagonism of and false claims about Black Americans, dating back to his 1989 call for the Central Park Five to be executed and the Justice Department's 1973 lawsuit accusing Trump's real estate business of discrimination against Black tenants.

“And then, most recently, you look in this very election, legal Black immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, saying they're eating their pets," Harris told Sharpe. “Part of what we have to help people understand is, don't think you're in Donald Trump's club. You're not. He's not going to be thinking about you."