Vice President JD Vance says former Vice President Kamala Harris “rebuffed” a request from his family to let their children tour the vice president’s residence before the inauguration.
Vance shared the alleged snub on the inaugural episode of the Katie Miller Podcast, which aired Monday. Harris — who embraced the nickname “Momala” during her presidential campaign — reportedly declined to give the Vance children an early look at the home they would be living in for the next four years.
“I think that, normally, it’s customary for the outgoing vice president to show the incoming vice president’s family the house,” Vance said. “We have three little kids, so I guess at the time our kids were, like, 7, 5, and, you know, 2 – I guess Mirabel turned 3 right before the inauguration.”
“Usha really wanted to show [the children where they would be living], so what we actually proposed is, recognizing the weirdness of the politics, can Usha take the kids over and just show them where they’re going to be living for the next 4 years, and they were rebuffed,” Vance said, adding that he and the second lady had to resort to showing their children their new house through photos.
“A friend of ours in Cincinnati had a book about the vice president’s residence, and so we would show the kids what it would look like, but that’s as close as they ever got to it” before the inauguration, Vance said.
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Harris also declined to extend the same courtesy to the incoming vice president. Traditionally, the sitting vice president invites their successor to tour the residence before inauguration, but Harris broke with that custom in Vance’s case.