Republican senator slammed online for implying that tampons are a luxury

Senator John Kennedy voiced opinion on necessity of women’s sanitary products during Fox News appearance with Sean Hannity

A Republican Senator from Louisiana ranted about Kamala Harris’s recent Call Her Daddypodcast appearance and in doing so insinuated that tampons are a luxury, and are not needed by Hurricane Helene victims.

Senator John Kennedy voiced his opinion on the necessity of women’s sanitary products during an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show on Monday. He was responding to Harris’s appearance on Alex Cooper’s mega-popular podcast over the weekend.

“The Vice President goes on some show called Call Her Daddy or Call Your Daddy or Who’s Your Daddy or something — Call Me Daddy, I like Who’s Your Daddy better — and among other things, she’s talking about tampons,” the senator said.

Call Her Daddy is the second most popular podcast on Spotify, boasting millions of listeners and second only to the Joe Rogan Experience. It’s unclear why the senator appeared surprised that women’s health was a topic of conversation between two women on a podcast whose audience is largely women.

“The people of Appalachia right now don’t give a function about tampons. They need water. They need to get out,” he said.

Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana appeared on “Hannity” during which he claimed that people in Appalachia affected by Hurricane Helen “don’t give a function” about tampons (screengrab/Fox News)

Kennedy is an Oxford-educated senator from Louisiana, not Appalachia.

Republicans have been trying to paint the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene as a failure of Joe Biden’s administration, even going so far as to call the storm “Kamala’s Katrina” on Fox News.

Social media users were quick to point out that Kennedy did not speak for the women affected by the storm.

“Guess what, women in Appalachia who can’t get their monthly supplies do [care]. There’s nothing like having yet another stressful thing to deal with on top of everything else,” X user @Leslieoo7 wrote in response to the video. “These clowns need to stop speaking for women.”

A male user of X also jumped in and offered a reasonable response to the clip.

“I’ve never used a tampon, and my memory is a bit hazy about 8th-grade Health Ed, but perhaps those who do use tampons still need to use them even after a devastating hurricane, and might need a bit of help getting them,” he wrote.

During her appearance on Call Her Daddy, Harris and the show’s host, Cooper, spent most of the discussion talking about women’s health and rights.

Harris revealed during the podcast that she was the first vice president to visit a reproductive healthcare clinic.