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Former Vice President Kamala Harris faced swift criticism for saying that it was not viable to have former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg as her running mate in 2024 due to him being gay.
“I guess I’d ask you to just elaborate on that a little bit. It’s hard to hear,” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said Monday during an interview with Harris about her campaign memoir.”You’re the first woman elected vice president. You’re a Black woman and a South Asian woman elected to that high office, very nearly elected president. To say that he couldn’t be on the ticket effectively because he was gay, it’s hard to hear.”
In her new book, “107 Days,” Harris wrote that Buttigieg “would have been an ideal partner — if I were a straight White man.”
“That’s not what I said, that he couldn’t be on the ticket because he is gay,” the former presidential candidate responded. “I was clear that in ‘107 Days,’ in one of the most hotly contested elections for president of the United States against someone like Donald Trump, who knows no floor, to be a Black woman running for president of the United States, and as a vice presidential running mate, a gay man. With the stakes being so high, it made me very sad. But I also realized it would be a real risk.”
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She said she had been an ally of the LGBTQ community her whole life and said it was not due to any “prejudice” on her part, but rather because she feared it would be untenable with Americans to elect a Black woman with a gay running mate.
“We had such a short period of time. And the stakes were so high. I think Pete is a phenomenal, phenomenal public servant,” she said.
Harris’ interview was immediately criticized online.
“Kamala Harris claims she couldn’t pick Pete Buttigieg as her VP because he’s gay, so she settled for buffoon Tim Walz,” conservative CNN commentator Scott Jennings said, mocking Harris’ later choice for running mate. “So to her, being gay is a bigger liability than endorsing taxpayer-funded sex changes for minors?! This logic is incoherent. Voters made the right choice.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, also mocked Harris’ eventual choice, writing, “Kamala couldn’t pick Buttigieg bc he’s gay. She couldn’t pick Shapiro bc he’s Jewish. So, in today’s crazy Dem party, she went with Walz—who’s just weird!”
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Talk show host Piers Morgan balked at how the times have changed, quipping, “This is beyond parody… Kamala admits to snubbing Buttigieg because he’s gay. What happened to DEI?!”
Radio personality Bo Snerdley mocked Harris, arguing she was speaking deceptively about her own words in her book.
“She didn’t say what her book said she said — but then she says it again,” he wrote.
It wasn’t just on the right that Harris took criticism.
“I’m not a Buttigieg fan, but the way homophobia often works is that people discriminate against gay people on the basis of the idea that other people are homophobic,” Noah Berlatsky wrote on progressive-leaning social media site Bluesky.
Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Harris failed to trust her “gut” with her decision. Buttigieg himself said he was surprised by Harris’ admission, telling Politico, “My experience in politics has been that the way that you earn trust with voters is based mostly on what they think you’re going to do for their lives, not on categories.”
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Fox News Digital reached out to Harris’ team and the Human Rights Campaign, a major LGBTQ advocacy group, but did not receive an immediate response.
Fox News’ Hanna Panreck contributed to this report.
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