On Monday, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris appeared on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy and, among other things, they talked about Donald Trump’s noted misogyny—even though the former president has been campaigning on the promise of being women’s great “protector.” In an apparent bid to prove Harris’ points, on Wednesday night, Trump went on something of a rant about both women, musing over who is “dumber,” before ultimately landing on Cooper.
“I think the other one asking the question[s] is dumber than Kamala. She’s a dummy,” Trump said, while conspicuously mispronouncing Harris’ name—Republicans’ latest go-to, racist microaggression. “I’ve watched her over the years. That is one dumb—that is one dumb woman. Sorry, I’m sorry women, she’s a dummy.” At least he said “sorry,” I guess! As for his admission that he’s “watched [Cooper] over the years,” I am noting that he is a self-avowed member of the Daddy Gang.
Something about Harris’ stop on the most popular podcast in the nation among Gen Z and millennial women clearly peeved Trump enough to dedicate a few spare moments of yet another incoherent campaign rally to attacking them. But it’s not exactly surprising he’s aware of CHD—Trump is famously, terminally online, and Cooper faced a shocking amount of backlash for having Harris on as a guest, even though she invited Trump to come on, too, and he declined.
Many, or at least a small, loud contingency of CHD fans, railed against Cooper for daring to wade into politics, or for ostensibly supporting Harris over Trump, which honestly gave me a bit of a LOL. You’d think listeners of a famously sex-positive podcast would recognize the dangers of Trump’s Project 2025 plan, which includes a national abortion ban and a ban on porn, too. In any case, Cooper seemed to predict and preemptively address the needless controversy. “I am so aware I have a very mixed audience when it comes to politics, so please hear me when I say my goal today is not to change your political affiliation,” she says at the beginning of the episode. She then asks Harris about her platform and says CHD listeners can do whatever they choose with this information.
Earlier this week, Newsweek reported that, after the Harris episode dropped on Monday, Cooper lost over 3,000 followers on the CHD official Instagram account and over 5,000 on her personal account. But that doesn’t sound like a big deal at all for someone with millions of followers, so I wouldn’t be so quick to sensationalize any of that. I’m more curious about how many followers she lost after interviewing Jojo Siwa earlier this year!
As media pundits and the internet continue to speculate about Harris’ media strategy in the final weeks of the campaign, I maintain that, clearly, there were benefits to her stopping by CHD. First, she was able to sound off on Trump’s abortion record to millions of young women voters, and remind them that the former president “hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade, and they did just as he intended.” Harris also reminded listeners that “this is the same guy that said women should be punished for having abortions,” and aptly shut down Trump’s lie that abortion is “execution at birth,” clarifying that this “is not happening anywhere in the United States.”
And, now, in the aftermath of the episode, Trump—who recently promised that he “WILL PROTECT WOMEN AT A LEVEL NEVER SEEN BEFORE”—is telling on himself by quite literally calling his political opponent and a popular podcaster a couple of dumb birds. Gee, I’m feeling safe and protected already.
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