Vice President JD Vance said his predecessor, Kamala Harris, refused the Vance family’s request for their children to tour the vice president’s residence before the inauguration.
Alternatively, Vance and his wife were forced to introduce their children to the vice presidential residence through photos. Vance talked about the snub by Harris on the first episode of the Katie Miller Podcast, noting she had been dubbed “Momala” during her campaign.
“I think that, normally, it’s customary for the outgoing vice president to show the incoming vice president’s family the house,” Vance said. “We have three little kids, so I guess at the time our kids were, like, 7, 5, and, you know, 2 – I guess Mirabel turned 3 right before the inauguration. Usha really wanted to show [the children where they would be living], so what we actually proposed is, recognizing the weirdness of the politics, can Usha take the kids over and just show them where they’re going to be living for the next 4 years, and they were rebuffed.”
Vance added: “A friend of ours in Cincinnati had a book about the vice president’s residence, and so we would show the kids what it would look like, but that’s as close as they ever got to it.”
Harris also skipped the tradition of inviting the incoming vice president to the residence before inauguration, declining to host Vance.
.@VP says after the election, since it’s usually “customary for the outgoing VP to show the incoming VP’s family the house,” he proposed bringing their kids over so they could see their home for the next four years — but Kamala “rebuffed” that request. pic.twitter.com/YC58At8Iqf
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) August 11, 2025
Harris often cites her “Momala” nickname, given by stepdaughter Ella a few years after marrying Doug Emhoff. She wrote about it in a 2019 Mother’s Day piece in Elle magazine, and the term has since been used in media to highlight her family’s support for her political career, though she does not have biological children of her own.
