Advisor Says Harris’ Shocking Oprah Comment Was a ‘Joke’

Vice President Kamala Harris made a controversial remark during an interview with Oprah Winfrey that sparked so much backlash, her team tried to write it off as a “joke.”

When the topic of personal safety came up, Harris quipped, “If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot.”

Harris laughed off the comment, noting that she probably “should not” have said it, but said her staffers would “deal with that later.”

Her prediction was correct, when Keisha Lance Bottoms, her campaign advisor, was quick to clarify the comment in a follow-up interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper.

“It was a joke, and she knew that we would still be talking about it today,” Bottoms explained, before pivoting to reinforce Harris’s support for responsible gun ownership and the Second Amendment.

“I think it‘s important that people know that the vice president respects the right to bear arms, that she supports the Second Amendment, but she wants responsible gun ownership and she wants our communities to be safe,” she added.

Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta, added that the offhand remark “humanizes” Harris, showing a more relatable side of the vice president that the public rarely sees.

In her recent interview with Oprah, Harris reiterated that she is a gun owner, which shocked the media mogul when she told the public during her debate with Trump.

During her 2020 presidential run, Harris originally acknowledged owning a firearm for personal safety due to her background as a former prosecutor.

“Here’s my point, Oprah. I’m not trying to take everyone’s guns away. I believe in the Second Amendment,” Harris stated, noting that she supports “common sense” gun laws.

She supports a ban on “assault weapons” and has called for universal background checks for all gun purchases.

During her 2020 campaign, Harris went as far as to endorse mandatory gun buyback programs for “assault weapons” and suggested that the federal government may need to confiscate millions of guns under certain circumstances.

Harris continues to campaign heavily in key battleground states ahead of the 2024 election.

With only weeks to go before Election Day, Harris used a rally in Wisconsin on Friday to downplay the importance of polling, despite leading Trump in several national surveys.

“46 days until the election. And, what we know, this is going to be a tight race until the very end,” Harris told a crowd of supporters in Madison.

“So, let’s not pay too much attention to the polls because let’s be clear, we are the underdog in this race and we have some hard work ahead of us.”

A national polling aggregator currently shows Harris edging out Trump by a slim margin, leading with 48.9% to his 46.1%.

In her rally speech, she sought to paint her campaign as a unifying force, contrasting herself with what she characterized as the divisive rhetoric of the Republican ticket.

“This is a people-powered campaign. This is a campaign about building community, building coalition,” Harris said, appealing to a sense of unity in a race that has otherwise been marked by intense polarization.

Meanwhile, Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, has also stepped into the spotlight in an effort to shield his wife from the intense scrutiny of the campaign.

In an interview with ABC’s *Good Morning America*, Emhoff pushed back against what he described as unfair criticism of Harris’s performance as vice president over the past three years.

“She’s the vice president, not the president. The vice president is there as part of the administration, not leading the administration,” he stated, deflecting responsibility from Harris for the administration’s more controversial decisions.

“So as president, she’s gonna be able to put forth her policies and plans and effectuate those,” Emhoff added.