As Kamala Harris‘ last minute campaign for the White House gains steam, comments from the vice president have resurfaced showing that she has quite the affinity for Meghan Markle.
This comes amid speculation that the Duchess of Sussex will soon endorse Harris for president and join the list of her celebrity backers, including George Clooney, Beyoncé, and Kesha.
Harris didn’t cross paths with Markle during her vice presidency, Newsweek reported, but has previously made two public statements about the royal.
In October 2019, while Harris was still campaigning to be the 2020 Democratic nominee for president, she retweeted a video where Markle spoke to a reporter about how she struggled to deal with salacious news coverage of her first pregnancy with her son Archie.
‘Any woman, especially when they’re pregnant, you’re really vulnerable,’ Markle said at time. ‘Also thank you for asking, because not many people have asked if I’m okay.’
Vice President Kamala Harris retweeted two statements from Meghan Markle in the past, though she hasn’t crossed paths with the royal during her term as Joe Biden’s second-in-command
Amid speculation that Markle will publicly throw her support behind Harris for president, a British commentator believes she might use the endorsement to ‘springboard’ her own political career
In her retweet of the clip, Harris wrote: ‘This is incredibly important. We must remember that it’s a sign of strength to show emotion.’
‘Meghan, we are with you.’
Months later, Harris interacted with a clip of Markle giving a virtual address to the 2020 graduating class of her old high school in Los Angeles.
In a portion of her speech, Markle addressed the political climate during that summer, which had been dominated by Black Lives Matter protests over the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and others.
She expressed how she had been apprehensive to make her thoughts known, fearing that her statements would get ‘picked apart.’
That culminated in her saying, ‘I realized the only wrong thing to say is to say nothing,’ before she listed the names of black people who were killed by police, including Philando Castile, Tamir Rice and Stephon Clark.
Harris approved of Markle’s message, calling it a ‘powerful statement’ in her retweet.
‘”The only wrong thing to say is to say nothing.” Thank you, Meghan, for this powerful statement,’ then-Senator Kamala Harris wrote on June 5, 2020.
This is the first time Harris publicly talked about Markle, where the Duchess speaks out about struggles she had with negative media attention during her pregnancy
Harris also retweeted a June 2020 clip of Markle addressing racial violence against black people at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests
The racial unrest going on in the country at this time also generated a widespread pressure campaign on Biden to pick a black woman as his running mate, CNN reported.
Biden would go on to choose Harris as his vice presidential pick in August 2020 but would later deny he chose her because of the pressure from Democrats.
Harris’ complimentary statements of Markle are getting new attention as Daily Express royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams predicted Markle will throw her support behind the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Not only that, Fitzwilliams believes she could use this endorsement to ‘provide a springboard for a political career of her own.’
Markle and her husband Prince Harry abandoned their roles in the Royal Family in January 2020 and moved to the US in June of that year.
Ever since, they’ve been getting more and more comfortable wading into US politics, though Markle has long been outspoken about causes supporting women and girls.
In 2020, they urged Americans to register to vote and reject misinformation.
For the 2024 contest, the pair has already joined a campaign to warn American voters against AI-generated misinformation.
Markle has gone so far as to consider running to replace California Senator Dianne Feinstein, who died in September 2023 at the age of 90.
