The Second (Rate?) Gentleman
Did Kamala Harris’s husband pay his nanny to raise his children but give up one of her own?
The evidence presented through various stories on his affair with his children’s teacher who moonlighted as their caregiver certainly raises this possibility. Though with confidentiality agreements and privacy concerns, we may never know exactly what happened other than the almost cliched truth of a middle-aged man cheating on his wife with the nanny.
This should at least make Democrats reconsider whether “the war on women” amounts to a neatly partisan conflict.
The affair definitely cost the other woman her nannying gig and allegedly cost her the teaching position at the Willows, a posh elementary school in Culver City, California, that the Emhoff children, then 15 and 10, attended. Doug Emhoff, for his part, lost his marriage over the fling. He reportedly lost a chunk of money in a financial settlement with his affair partner, too. Despite her working as a teacher’s assistant when she first encountered the Emhoffs, she now lives on a waterfront home in the Hamptons.
“During my first marriage,” Doug Emhoff admitted, “Kerstin and I went through some tough times on account of my actions.”
It sounds as though his employee went through some tough times as well. She lost her teaching gig and paid position with the family, despite tackling duties that went beyond any listed in the job description. She allegedly gave up her own child. And now, all these years later, a woman living a private life has been conscripted into becoming a public figure based on her worst moments and choices. As she told The Daily Mail, “I’m kind of freaked out now.”
The temptation to dismiss the 15-year-old damage to numerous lives as old news fades when one recalls (how can one forget?) the incessant and at times picayune way that Democrats have amplified Donald Trump’s treatment, real and imagined, of the fairer sex. This includes hot-mic recordings of his claims of how women can behave toward celebrities and how celebrities can behave toward them, a “sexual assault” allegation in which the victim cannot remember the year in which it occurred, a string of alleged affairs in which paramours pried a great deal of money from the billionaire in exchange for silence, and unkind descriptives used toward Rosie O’Donnell.
If all that is fair game, then certainly Kamala Harris’s husband abusing his power over a female employee in this dehumanizing, life-altering way is, too. Indeed, so debased has politics become that Emhoff’s former wife recently tweeted of J.D. Vance’s marriage, “Usha’s going to be in the ex-wives club in 2025. Mark my words.”
The unseemly preoccupation with the private lives of not just politicians but their spouses, though predating Donald Trump, went into overdrive the moment he rode down the golden escalator. The media’s fixation, like so many of their fixations, finds boundaries only within their ideological boundaries. Outside of them, a New York Times reporter may act as though employed by The National Enquirer. Tellingly, just as in the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky saga, a figure outside of the mainstream media broke the story — and noted that the mainstream media had it first.
Laura Loomer, not exactly anyone’s idea of Bob Woodward, tweeted the story first, claiming five sources, last week before The Daily Mail, The New York Post, and other outlets followed suit. Loomer, to her credit, omitted the nanny’s name in that initial tweet. The story now runs in some of the widest circulation newspapers around the world (and runs below the fold or not at all in other ones).
The involvement of so fringe a figure in rooting out an embarrassing truth for Democrats reveals the degree to which journalists now act as active participants in elections rather than chroniclers and observers of them. This should at least make Democrats reconsider whether “the war on women” amounts to a neatly partisan conflict or wins volunteers of all parties.
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