Oprah brought together a team of A-list celebrities like Meryl Streep and Chris Rock as she hosted a “Unite for America” event where she interviewed Vice President Kamala Harris in front of a live audience.
Harris called herself a “gun owner” and a supporter of the Second Amendment, despite positioning herself as the least pro-gun candidate during her first run for president. The vice president has also shifted her stances on other policy issues, like she is now pro building a wall at the southern border, a Trump-era policy.
Harris has done very few media interviews since becoming the Democratic nominee for president, often leaning on scripted interactions to reach her voters. She has also received pushback for being unclear about what policies she supports.
The nearly two-hour-long event Thursday, where Harris received friendly questions from Oprah, who has endorsed her, was not heavy on policy. Besides receiving some criticism for “flip-flopping” and evading some of Oprah’s questions related to the border, Harris received glowing reviews from a long list of Hollywood stars and grassroots groups like, Win With Black Women, White Dudes for Harris, Republicans for Harris, and Swifties for Kamala.
Here are three of the major takeaways:
1. Kamala Harris said she owns a gun
At one point in the interview, Harris told the crowd she is a gun owner, before laughing and saying, “If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot. I probably should not have said that. I’ll deal with that later.”
Previously, Harris said she supported a mandatory gun buyback program for assault-style weapons but hasn’t focused on that policy as much in recent debates, as she tries to appeal to moderate and conservative-leaning voters. The changes in her position during the 2024 presidential election have led to her receiving criticism for being vague.
Has she talked about guns before?: Harris said she was a gun owner during her debate with former President Donald Trump.
During a visit in March to the Parkland, Florida, high school where there was a shooting in 2018 that killed 17 people, Harris announced two gun safety policies championed by the Biden-Harris administration, per a White House release:
- Universal background checks.
- A ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines.
During her conversation with Oprah, Harris said about gun ownership, “I’m in favor of the Second Amendment and I’m in favor of assault weapons bans, universal background checks, red flag laws,” per Time.
“This business about taking everyone’s guns away, Tim Walz and I are both gun owners,” Harris said during the presidential debate on Sept. 10, per NPR, before claiming that Trump was “lying” about her threatening to take guns away.
The Trump campaign has referred to a video from 2007, when Harris was district attorney in San Francisco, when she said at a press conference, “We’re going to require responsible behaviors among everybody in the community, and just because you legally possess a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn’t mean that we’re not going to walk into that home and check to see if you’re being responsible and safe in the way you conduct your affairs.”
Harris’ campaign website’s section on “Ensure Safety and Justice for All” reads:
“As a prosecutor, district attorney, and attorney general, Kamala Harris has fought to ensure everyone has the right to safety, to dignity, and to justice.
Everyone should have the freedom to live in safe communities — that’s why Vice President Harris is fighting to keep our communities safe from gun violence and crime, secure our borders and fix our broken immigration system, tackle the opioid and fentanyl crisis, and ensure no one is above the law — including the president.”
— Kamala Harris Campaign
Timing: Her comments about guns come on the heels of an apparent assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, marking the second attack on the former president after a bullet grazed his ear at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and where one person was killed and two others seriously injured.
Following the second incident, Harris reached out to Trump “to see if he was OK, and I told him what I have said publicly. There is no place for political violence in our country,” she said in an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists.
2. ‘Unite for America’ brings out the A-listers during the Oprah-hosted event
Oprah enlisted Hollywood A-list celebrities — the likes of Meryl Streep, Chris Rock, Ben Stiller and Jennifer Lopez— to make the case for a Harris presidency.
Major celebrities in attendance, according to The Hollywood Reporter, included:
- Ben Stiller
- Julia Roberts
- Jennifer Lopez
- Tracee Ellis Ross
- Bryan Cranston
- Chris Rock
- Meryl Streep
- Oprah herself
Here are some of the highlights.
Comedian Chris Rock: “I want to bring my daughters to the White House to meet this Black woman president,” he said, USA Today reported. “I’m ready to turn the page, man. All of the hate and negativity, it has to stop.”
Meryl Streep: “All of this, the surround of hatred and venom and toxicity and encouraging some segment of Americans to hate other segments of Americans,” can be “prevented,” she said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “We’re done, we’re done with it. It’s just crazy and nobody wants it. We’re done, we’re done with it.”
The audience also heard from Julia Roberts, who was last seen on the national political stage during a fundraiser for President Joe Biden, days before George Clooney wrote an opinion piece asking Biden to step down as the nominee. Roberts said this is the first time her children will cast a vote in an election, and that she “couldn’t be more excited for them to have the legacy to say that their first vote they ever cast for president was for you. I have just chills saying that out loud.”
Compared to Trump: It didn’t take long for Harris to attract endorsements from Hollywood stars who previously supported Biden. During the last two months, the endorsements she has received include from Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, and Martha Stewart.
Others like Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Robert De Niro, Molly Ringwald, Matt Damon, the producer Shonda Rhimes, the chef José Andrés and Lin-Manuel Miranda are involved in the Harris campaign’s fundraising efforts.
As USA Today reported, a Trump campaign fundraising email sent after the Oprah show said Harris has “Hollywood hacks like Oprah Winfrey” to help her raise millions of dollars.
3. The Harris campaign on abortion and health care
One of the major issues Harris and other participants reiterated during the show is the campaign’s focus on addressing abortion and health care in America.
What’s Harris’ stance on abortion?: Harris shared the story of Amber Thurman when broaching the subject of abortion. Thurman took medication at home to induce an abortion, and later died in the hospital. Abortion advocates say she died because of abortion restrictions. Harris said she does not support restrictive abortion laws.
According to the Post, Harris said, “It’s a health care crisis that affects the patient and the profession.” The vice president has been a champion of abortion rights throughout her career, and took the lead on the issue after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.