Former Vice President Kamala Harris sat down with former U.S. women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe on Thursday for an episode of the podcast “Why Are You Like This?” touching on women’s sports, wealth inequality and her political future.
Rapinoe, who played professionally for the U.S. women’s national soccer team before her retirement, has been an outspoken advocate on issues affecting women’s sports. During the conversation, she reflected on her own career and the state of women’s athletics.
“I’m thinking about my own experience being a female athlete, and I went through, in the prime of my career, just the most historic time in women’s sports,” Rapinoe said. “I mean, it was crazy in the best ways. We saw a huge amount of progress, which has led into a pretty significant regression in terms of just equal rights and people’s rights in general. I definitely think those two are tied.”
The interview also touched on Harris’s upbringing. She said her parents took her to “marches” in a “stroller,” which she connected to her later educational and political choices.
When the conversation turned to gender and public life, Rapinoe asked Harris to describe what it means to govern “as a woman.” Harris responded, “Well, I’ve always been a woman, so I don’t know what to tell you.”
Harris then offered a comparison, asking Rapinoe to picture someone based on the phrase “the boy next door.” “Now you have a sense of what he looks like,” Harris said, describing the imagined figure as someone who “probably plays softball,” lives “somewhere in suburban America” and is “a good kid.” She then asked what four-word phrase might similarly describe herself or Rapinoe, saying, “we don’t have it.”
Later in the interview, Harris addressed wealth inequality, saying, “We have increasingly witnessed a concentration of wealth and power among a few, to the exclusion of the most, and that wealth and concentration being also a political power.” Harris herself recently purchased an $8 million home in Malibu, California, that includes a heated pool and an in-ground spa.
Asked about a potential run for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, Harris told Rapinoe she has not made a decision.
Harris lost the 2024 presidential election to Donald Trump.
