Behind the persona of Vice President Kamala Harris as “Momala” are her two stepchildren: Cole and Ella Emhoff. With Harris’ presidential campaign now in full swing, they, too, are coming under fire.
Ella Emhoff, 25, spoke out earlier this week after comments resurfaced from GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance, who in 2021 said Harris and other Democrats are “childless cat women” who “also want to do the rest of the country miserable.”
In an Instagram story published on Thursday, Ella Emhoff referred to this.
“How can you be ‘childless’ when you have cutie pie babies like Cole and me?” she said. “I love my three parents.”
The youngest members of the second family, Cole, 29, and Ella, 25, are the children of the second Mr. Doug Emhoff, who was previously married to the film producer Kerstin Emhoff, who herself called the comments of Vance “baseless”.
“For more than 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has co-parented with Doug and I,” she said in a statement to NBC News. “She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always there. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.
Vance spokesman Taylor Van Kirk told NBC News that those on the left took Vance’s words out of context “and spun a false narrative about his stance on the issues.”
Since the pandemic and President Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential run, Ella Emhoff has become a social media phenomenon.
Hailed by some as the “First Daughter of Bushwick”, the resident of New York City is a graduate of the Parsons School of Design and in 2021 was signed as a model at the renowned agency IMG Models. He also did a cameo in Bo Burham’s 2013 music video “Repeat Stuff”.
Gen Z Americans have been connecting with her androgynous fashion sense and wacky hobbies since her stepmother took over as vice president. She said in a 2021 New York Times Interview, performed alongside his brother, whose mother, Doug Emhoff and Harris are a “three-person parenting team.” They don’t always have their interests, he said, but they are supportive anyway.
“With the hair and the tattoos and stuff like that, I think they’re all in the realm of like, ‘I don’t get it, but I want to be whoever you want to be,'” he said.
She has been featured on magazine covers and editorials, and has walked runways. She is also known for her knitting club, “Soft Hands Knit Club”, where she taught members of the New York City community to knit with her materials.
On her website, Ella Emhoff describes herself as a multidisciplinary artist and creator. She is very active on Instagram, where she mainly shares pictures of her sweater, model and dog.
In the New York Times interview, Ella described her parents’ relationship as “like the honeymoon phase forever,” saying that she has a close bond with her stepmother.
“It’s a cool dynamic that we all have. And I think it’s a good model to show that you can have this and this is not strange,” he said.
Doug Emhoff’s son, Cole, is significantly quieter than his sister when it comes to his social media presence, but he has also put his close relationship with Harris on display several times. At their wedding last year, Harris officiated the ceremony.
“It was so wonderful that the kids asked me to do it,” Harris said he told People magazine at the time. “For us, we think that marriage is not only between these two people, but the meeting of families. So it was very much with that spirit that we all participated.”
Cole Emhoff said he loved Harris since they first met, when he was a senior in high school.
“I met him and we had this amazing dinner. And I realized like, Oh, my God, Doug has met someone who is totally unique and totally special,” he she told Glamour in 2020.
Both brothers attended Biden’s 2021 inauguration, and behind-the-scenes photos from the event have broken up Cole’s otherwise low-key Instagram feed.
“It’s weird turning on CNN and seeing my dad. I’m like, ‘Wait, you’re not here! But I guess you are?'” she said in the New York Times interview. “It feels completely unprecedented for us because we haven’t really been in politics our whole lives. We’re still getting used to it.”
