They say you can’t go home again, but second gentleman Doug Emhoff did just that with Good Morning America’s Michael Strahan, setting out to his old stomping grounds in Matawan, New Jersey, for an interview.
The two had a conversation, released Friday, at an area diner, and even found his brother Andy’s initials still on a flagpole in front of his former home, decades later, as Doug encountered the existential dread of his upcoming 60th birthday. If you’re wondering what to get him, he said, he and wife Kamala Harris would accept the joint gift of the presidency.
Emhoff leaned into his Garden State cred, telling Strahan, “New Jersey, it’s about, you know, loyalty.”
Tony Soprano, are you listening? “It’s about family. It’s about sticking up for each other. It’s about being strong, not taking any crap.”
Among the crap Emhoff isn’t taking are Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ comments this week that Harris “doesn’t have anything keeping her humble,” while Sanders’ kids do that for her.
“It’s appalling for somebody who is in a position of leadership, like governor, to say something so repulsive and so out of touch,” Emhoff said when asked about the statement, in which Sanders also ignored that Harris is stepmother to Doug’s children from his previous marriage, Cole and Ella Emhoff. “Not only on the one, mispronouncing her name, which is disrespectful. She knows what her name is. And then, two, as if you need to have your own biological children to be humble.”
“But then, then to say as if women should be humble,” Emhoff continued, calling the comments “a repulsive thing to say.”
Emhoff continued to earn his stripes as both a Wife Guy and an Ex-Wife Guy, praising Harris’ leadership since being called up to the top of the ticket as “the best, most badass version of the Kamala Harris we know and I love very much,” and giving ex-wife Kristen Emhoff her flowers for her presence on the campaign trail and repeated defenses of Harris.
“Yeah, we roll hard together, you know?” he said of the whole Harris-Emhoff clan. “That’s who we are. And, you know, Kersten has been incredible. When you attack Kamala, especially on issues about motherhood, Kersten has just been out there each and every time just to tell the truth about who Kamala is as a mother, as a person, as a member of our family, again, who’s always there for us. And she’s gonna be there for your family.”
And though he admitted to missing his work as an entertainment litigator, Emhoff said he feels fulfilled in his role as second gentleman and potential first.
“A man supporting a woman and lifting up a woman, it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “When some women succeed it’s not like some man somewhere is not succeeding. There’s like this binary thinking where it’s either/or. No, it’s both. When we lift up women, we lift up all of society.”