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Former talk show host Montel Williams is addressing his past romance with former U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I’m one of those guys that I don’t kiss and tell,” Williams, 70, said during a Monday, July 6, appearance on the “On Par With Maury Povich” podcast. “Who she dated 30, 40 years ago doesn’t matter.”
Williams and Harris, 61, briefly dated in the early 2000s when Harris worked as an attorney for the city of San Francisco. By then, Williams was already a popular household name thanks to his eponymous syndicated talk show, which aired from 1991 to 2008.
Pictures of the couple making a rare red carpet appearance together at the 2001 Race to Erase Multiple Sclerosis gala in Los Angeles went viral in 2020 after Harris became vice president-elect following the November 2020 presidential election.
“It was crazy. It was absolutely insane,” Williams said of seeing the pictures of him and Harris resurface. “I was like, ‘Oh my goodness.’ But you know, you can’t erase your past. You embrace your past.”
Williams also weighed in on Harris’ bid to become president in 2024, claiming that he had an instinct that she would lose the election to current president Donald Trump. He cited her campaign beginning just four months before the election after then-President Joe Biden announced in July 2024 that he would no longer seek a second term.
“I didn’t think that it was going to work out,” he said. “I think the lateness of the campaign was really, really what hurt her. I think that there was a lot of misconception about who she was, who she is. One of the smartest people I think I’ve ever met in my life. I give her credit for that.”
“Could she have done a good job [as president]? Without a doubt,” Williams added. “But I think circumstances and timing were all bad.”
According to Williams, another factor in Harris’ defeat is that he doesn’t feel Americans are ready to vote for a woman as president.
“People can get as mad at me as you want. Anybody out there who thinks that America is gonna elect a woman in the next four or five years, you are crazy,” he said. “I don’t care what woman it is. I’m just gonna say that. And you know, maybe that makes people angry. I could care less if you get angry. I don’t think America’s ready for that.”
Harris married lawyer Doug Emhoff, 61, in August 2014 and is stepmother to his two children, son Cole, 31, and daughter Ella, 27.
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