US second gentleman Emhoff meets New Zealand’s Ardern to discuss online hate as World Cup begins

AUCKLAND, New Zealand (AP) — Doug Emhoff, the husband of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, met with former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern Friday to discuss ways to combat online hate and extremism.

Emhoff was in Auckland to lead a delegation to the FIFA Women’s World Cup and meet with officials. He told a meeting of the Christchurch Call the world was witnessing a “global epidemic of hate.”

Emhoff, who is Jewish, said he was “working against this scourge of anti-Semitism and this epidemic of hate in general. So this work is very, very personal to me.”

“But my work is not just about Jews. It’s about all of us. It’s about combating hate in all of its forms,” he said.

The group is named after the New Zealand city where a gunman in 2019 shot and killed 51 Muslim worshippers at two mosques while streaming his attack online.

Ardern thanked Emhoff for his work and for sharing in the “joyous occasion” of the World Cup. She launched the Christchurch Call with French President Emmanuel Macron two months after the Christchurch attack. After stepping down as leader earlier this year, she was appointed special envoy for the Christchurch Call, declining to take any pay for the role.

Emhoff will next travel to Samoa.