Vice President Kamala Harris got glammed up for her Vogue magazine cover shoot Monday — as Israel marked the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre and Florida braced for its second deadly hurricane in days.
Harris, 59, was hailed as a “candidate for our times” on the front page of the fashion monthly, which pictured her smirking in a $3,000-plus chocolate Gabriela Heart suit with broad lapels and expensive Tiffany earrings.
The lengthy accompanying profile of the VP and Dem presidential hopeful gushed about her being “a results-oriented, roll-up-the-sleeves leader” who became one of those rare “individuals summoned for acts of national rescue” after President Biden exited the 2024 race.
Harris sat for photos for the article on the same day the world marked the anniversary of the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust, when Palestinian Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and slaughtered more than 1,200 people, mostly civlians, and kidnapped 250 more.
The photo shoot took place between one of two public appearances she made before the airing of her high-stakes “60 Minutes” interview that evening with CBS’ Bill Whitaker.
Upon leaving Washington, DC, for her New York media blitz that day, Harris also launched a veiled attack on GOP Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, 46, for “playing political games” by allegedly avoiding her phone calls after Hurricane Helene.
At the time, the Sunshine State, battered by Helene late last month, also was in the crosshairs of Hurricane Milton, which Biden warned would be “the storm of the century” for Florida when it struck this week.
“You know, moments of crisis, if nothing else, should really be the moment that anyone who calls themselves a leader says they’re going to put politics aside and put the people first,” Harris told reporters on the tarmac, not naming DeSantis directly.
“People are in desperate need of support right now and playing political games at this moment in these crisis situations — these are the height of emergency situations — is utterly irresponsible and it is selfish,” she said.
Aides to the Florida governor reportedly “didn’t answer” the vice president’s overtures before Helene made landfall Sept. 26 — but DeSantis told reporters in a Monday afternoon press conference he “didn’t know she called me.
“She has no role in this process,” DeSantis jabbed back later in the week on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “And I’ve been dealing with these storms in Florida under both [former President Donald] Trump and [President] Biden. Neither of them ever politicized it.”
Biden, later asked whether DeSantis should be taking Harris’ calls, chose to stay out of the fracas.
“All I can tell you is I’ve talked to Gov. DeSantis,” he said Wednesday without mentioning his former running mate. “He’s been very gracious, he’s thanked me for all we’ve done, he knows what we’re doing, and I think that’s important.”
Before her jab at the governor Monday, Harris planted a pomegranate tree with husband Doug Emhoff outside the Naval Observatory to memorialize “the strength and endurance of the Jewish people” and the “horror of Oct. 7.”
“We’re doing everything we can possibly do to get a ceasefire-hostage deal done,” she vowed to a reporter when asked about the Israel-Hamas war. “It’s one of the most important ways we will be able to end this war and bring any type of stability to the region. It’s one of the highest priorities of this administration.”
The vice president has been at odds with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at several points during the war — even declining to attend a joint session of Congress to hear him speak — and has repeatedly accused Israel’s military of killing “too many” Palestinians in response to the Oct. 7 horror.
In interviews since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, she has also declined to say whether she would be in favor of withholding some US weapons shipments from Israel to leverage policy outcomes.
Harris previously posed for Vogue before Inauguration Day 2021 featuring Biden as president and her as his right-hand woman. She later had an aide whine to the magazine’s editor in chief that her appearance in black Converse sneakers and slim-cut pants was unflattering.
