Ainsley Earhardt, co-host of Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” morning show, expressed concern on Monday morning that if women hear a recent interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, they may decide to vote for her in the presidential election.
Over the weekend, Harris gave an interview to “Call Her Daddy,” which the Associated Press reports is “the most-listened-to podcast for women,” with millions of fans.
During an interview with a Republican strategist, Earhardt said the interview was a problem.
“If you don’t know the issues, you really think, ‘Okay, she’s selling herself, she’s talking about women’s rights and how Donald Trump has stacked the court with all these conservative justices’—and if you’re a woman listening to that podcast and you don’t know how progressive she is, you might vote for her,” Earhardt said.
The substance of what Harris discussed on the podcast is true. Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices during his presidency—Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch—and all three were part of the six-vote conservative majority that overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion. And that move has been very unpopular with the public at large but especially among women. In an April 2024 poll from the Pew Research Center, 64% of women said abortion should be legal in most or all cases—3 percentage points higher than the share of men who said the same.
Trump also appointed 226 federal judges who align with the conservative ideology of groups like the Federalist Society.
Earhardt also alleged that Harris has spread a “lie” about Trump opposing in vitro fertilization. However, the Republican Party platform supports allowing states to make laws that would outlaw the use of embryos created via IVF. A similar situation occurred in February in Alabama, whose state Supreme Court ruled that embryos should be considered children. (The state legislature soon passed a law to protect IVF in the state, though some local clinics say the law wasn’t enough to truly protect the procedure.)
In addition to her appearance on “Call Her Daddy,” Harris is doing a series of interviews this week, including with “60 Minutes,” “The View,” and “The Howard Stern Show.” And all this comes despite Fox News personalities’ frequent complaints that Harris is supposedly “hiding” from the American public.
Since he became a political figure, Trump has been a fixture on Fox News and particularly on “Fox & Friends,” where he previously helped to popularize the racist birther conspiracy theory about then-President Barack Obama. In his appearances on that program, Trump is often allowed to speak at length about a disjointed group of issues with little to no response from Earhardt and her fellow hosts.
On the wider issue of women’s issues and rights, Fox News has a long and sordid history of hostility to women, both on air and behind the scenes, including allegations against Earhardt’s co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade. The network’s former chair, Republican operative Roger Ailes, who died in 2017, left his post amid accusations by multiple women of sexual abuse and groping.
In September, a producer for “Hannity,” the network’s lead primetime program, was fired after reported accusations of sexual harassment.
Republished with permission from Daily Kos.
