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Home » TRANSCRIPT: Kamala Harris’ Full Interview on the Howard Stern Show

TRANSCRIPT: Kamala Harris’ Full Interview on the Howard Stern Show

Read the full transcript of Howard Stern’s conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris in a live, exclusive interview on SiriusXM.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Prince and Musical Tastes

HOWARD STERN: Playing the bat dance for Madam Vice President. Well, we’ll listen to this for a second. First of all, it’s me, Howard. I’m here on a special day. I was supposed to have a day off. I’d only come in for the Vice President of the United States. Because right now is my nap time.

KAMALA HARRIS: Try not to fall asleep during this interview.

HOWARD STERN: Do you nap at all?

KAMALA HARRIS: Not really. I wish I could. I don’t mind, you know, like, in a different life. You know, sometimes on a Sunday afternoon. Yeah.

HOWARD STERN: I know. Look what you… By the way, I’m playing bat dance because I knew you were a Prince fan.

KAMALA HARRIS: Yes.

HOWARD STERN: But I believe, I’m a huge Prince fan, but I believe that the Batman soundtrack was his best work.

KAMALA HARRIS: Really?

HOWARD STERN: It was genius. Yes. Think about it. Listen to this. You didn’t do a few?

KAMALA HARRIS: No, no. I mean, no. I mean, like, obviously, like 1999, I thought was spectacular. You can go back to his early days. But like him on the guitar, there was just nothing like it. And so many people have… I mean, even you look at Bruno Mars today, right?

HOWARD STERN: Right.

KAMALA HARRIS: Who’s just been influenced by Prince. You know, the night he passed, Doug and I were in L.A. And actually just, like, he and I have very different musical tastes, my husband and I.

HOWARD STERN: What’s Doug into? Like cream or…

KAMALA HARRIS: Like the Peshmo.

HOWARD STERN: Oh, the Peshmo.

KAMALA HARRIS: Yeah, that’s him. I grew up kind of hip-hop. But Prince is the one intersection where we both love. And we just played Prince all night long. We danced. We sang his songs. It was, that was our little tribute.

HOWARD STERN: Did you ever meet Prince in real life?

KAMALA HARRIS: I never met him in real life.

HOWARD STERN: Wow. I went to see him. This is such a weird story. Forget me. Forget my story.

HOWARD STERN: Tell me, though.

KAMALA HARRIS: I want to hear it.

HOWARD STERN: Well, it’s very strange because I was a huge Prince fan like you. And a friend called me, we’d worked on a book with him of pictures. And he said, Prince is going to perform for about 150 people. Come over. And I said, I’m going. Go over. He comes out. And he announces to the crowd, turn off all the lights. And he’s playing in the dark the entire time. I left. I said, this is ridiculous. I could listen to this on the radio. He didn’t want to be seen.

KAMALA HARRIS: And he wanted you to feel it with your ears and your spirit instead of your eyes.

HOWARD STERN: But ridiculous. I’m finally going to see Prince.

KAMALA HARRIS: What time of night was it? He was famously a night owl.

KAMALA HARRIS: It was early. It was an early session. It was like a special promotional thing.

Political Career and Self-Promotion

HOWARD STERN: It makes me think of you because you’ve said, sort of running for office, even when you ran as a DA or an attorney general, you said, I don’t like talking about myself. It feels I was raised not to be a narcissist. And here you’re, you know, the other guy is so only talking about himself. But it’s weird. It’s odd for you to talk about your accomplishments and sort of congratulate yourself.

KAMALA HARRIS: I just have always, again, you’re right. I was raised this way. It’s not about you. It’s about what you do. And so it is, it feels immodest to me to talk about myself, which apparently I’m doing right now.

HOWARD STERN: Right. But you have to, right?

KAMALA HARRIS: And a friend of mine actually said, look, this is not a time to worry about modesty because this is, you know, obviously, you got to let people know who you are.

The Pressure of the Moment

HOWARD STERN: When you said you don’t nap, I get it. Because like what you’ve taken on is extraordinarily difficult. And I mean, do you feel the pressure of the moment in the sense that, like when I met you out in the hall, I said, I’m really nervous because I want this to go well for you. I want it to go well for the country. Even when I watch them on Saturday Night Live would be where they have Maya Rudolph playing you. I hate it. I don’t want you being made fun of. There’s too much at stake.

I believe the entire future of this country right now. I mean, as America land of the free home of the brave, I think it’s literally on the line. And when I see them, how did you react to this Saturday Night Live?

KAMALA HARRIS: Well, I just saw it actually. And it was funny. I am a huge fan of Maya Rudolph. I think she’s put a lot of time into doing the piece and the character. But to your point, I literally lose sleep and have been over. What is at stake in this election? I mean, honestly, I end the day pretty much every day these days asking myself, what can I do more?

HOWARD STERN: Yeah. And what can you do? I mean, you’re going out, you’re talking, you’re coming here, you’re going, you went on the view this morning. You’re going to the shows. You did 60 Minutes. By the way, I thought what was so amazing about 60 Minutes is the fact that Trump turned it down.

KAMALA HARRIS: Yeah.

HOWARD STERN: I mean, it just says so much. He didn’t want to be fact checked. This is maddening. This is insanity. What do you mean you don’t want to be fact checked?

The Stakes of the Election

KAMALA HARRIS: I think that, you know, Howard, people ask me, like, what do you think is going on?