Kamala Harris confirms she’s not allowed to use emojis as vice president

‘I have not received, directly, an emoji in a year and a half’

Kamala Harris has confirmed that, as the vice president of the United States, she is not allowed to send or receive emojis.

The 57-year-old politician opened up about her texting habits while appearing on Late Night with Seth Meyers on Monday.

During the conversation, host Seth Meyers addressed some of the “many sacrifices” that Harris has to make throughout her career, before asking her if it was “true that [she] can no longer send emojis”.

In response, the 49th vice president laughed and confessed that she has not used emojis in over a year.

“Okay, high-class problems,” she joked. “I have not received, directly, an emoji in a year and a half.”

Meyers then questioned if there was another way for her to receive the emojis: “Wow. And you can’t have your staff, like, print them off?”

In response, she said: “I mean, I suppose they could, but they are not coming to me directly.”

Harris further explained how her texting routines have changed, noting that while her family is “very competitive” about online games, their group chat doesn’t exist anymore.

“For example, our family is very competitive, be it Wordle or other things,” she said. “And, you know, the family group chat is no longer a thing.”

She went on to recall that because she couldn’t send a “text” to her family on a special occasion, they had to do a “phone tree.”

“It was my father-in-law’s birthday, and we were talking to the kids,” Harris explained. “And I thought, ‘OK, the kids can do a video for his birthday.’ And normally, I’d send a family text, but this time we had to do a phone tree.”

Meyers then noted how uncommon phone calls are nowadays, in comparison to the act of sending a text message.

“It’s very out-dated to actually do an old-school phone tree,” he said.

This wasn’t Harris’ first time discussing her daily social media and texting routines as vice president. During an interview with The Ringer in April, she noted that due to restrictions on her phone, she can’t share her Wordle games with her family.

“My phone does not let me do that,” she said, when asked if she could post her Wordle scores on Twitter or send them to her sister. “My phone doesn’t let me text anybody, which is sad.”

She also noted that while she doesn’t get to compete with her family in Wordle, she still gets to talk to her husband about it.

Elsewhere in her interview with Meyers, Harris discussed some other changes in her life since becoming vice president, including “security protocols” that she has to follow. More specifically, she described how she and her husband take walks.

“We love to take walks, and these days the walks are quite different,” she added, comparinf her walks to a scene in The Godfather where Michael, is out with a woman that he’s interested in. “The shot is just the two of them taking this lovely walk, and then it pans out and the whole village is with them. That’s what our walks are like.”