Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff did not deny allegations he slapped his ex-girlfriend during a soon-to-be-released MSNBC interview.
The moment came on Friday when the network shared a snippet of the second gentleman’s sit-down interview with “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough. The interview is expected to air on Monday. As The Federalist’s Tristan Justice previously noted, three friends of the alleged victim claimed to the Daily Mail that Emhoff “struck the woman named under the pseudonym ‘Jane’ following a glitzy night out at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival in France.”
The victim’s friends also provided photos, “other documents and communications corroborating elements of the story,” according to the outlet.
While Emhoff reportedly didn’t respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment, a spokesman for the second gentleman told Semafor, “this report is untrue” and “any suggestion that he would or has ever hit a woman is false.”
During his interview with Scarborough, Emhoff was pressed on Donald Trump’s decision to forgo a second debate with Harris. The second gentleman contended the former president is spreading a “fog of misinformation and disinformation and gaslighting.”
Scarborough quickly agreed, arguing Trump is spreading untrue claims about Emhoff and implying the Daily Mail’s reporting constitutes “misinformation.”
“And he’s spreading [‘misinformation’] about you, saying that tabloid stories about your personal life, saying it should be front and center,” Scarborough said, indirectly referencing the Daily Mail story. “I know I seem like a very zen, mindful person, but I think I’d be pissed off. And I’m just wondering … how do you all stay centered? How do you stay disciplined, and not really go off, and not really push back hard at these things?”
Taking the lifeline gifted to him on a silver platter, Emhoff declined to refute the allegations made against him in the Daily Mail report, instead referring to any claims about his personal life as a “distraction.”
“We don’t have time to be pissed off. We don’t have time to focus on it; it’s all a distraction. It’s designed to try to get us off our game,” he said.
As noted by Justice, the Daily Mail’s report came after days of legacy media coverage fawning over Emhoff as someone who, as MSNBC’s Jen Psaki claimed, is “reshap[ing] the perception of masculinity.”
“Emhoff, said CNN’s Dana Bash, represents the Democrats’ effort to ‘put forward male figures’ who ‘can speak to men out there who might not be the testosterone-laden, gun-toting type of guy who wants to listen to Hulk Hogan,’” Justice wrote.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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