In a recent interview, Democrat policy advisor and former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice shared the warmth of her love for her son, despite the political differences between them.
“I have a 23-year-old son whom I love dearly,” she told NPR on Tuesday, “whose politics are very, very different from my own and from the rest of the family.”
Rice’s son, John David Rice-Cameron, is an outspoken supporter of President Trump. He served as the president of his College Republicans chapter at Stanford University, the same university from which both of his parents graduated.
This is in sharp contrast to his parents, both of whom are Democrats. Ian Officer Cameron (his father) is a former executive producer with ABC News, and Susan Rice has an extensive history with the Democrat party.
Rice served on the National Security Council for former President Bill Clinton, as foreign policy advisor to Democratic presidential nominees such as John Kerry and Barack Obama, as Ambassador to the United Nations from 2009 to 2013 in the Obama administration, and as the United States National Security Advisor from 2013 to 2017.
“My son and I will have some robust disagreements over some matters of policy, not all,” Rice continued. “And yet, at the end of the day, you know, I love him dearly and he loves me.”
In an interview back in 2018 with Fox News, Rice’s then-20-year-old son said the same of his mother: “My mother and I have a great relationship, and my mother believes strongly in the free and respectful exchange of ideas.”
According to Rice-Cameron, it was his parents’ encouragement of open debate and discussion that led him to listen to counter voices, like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin, and it was ultimately the Tea Party movement that led him away from his parents’ liberalism into conservatism.
Mother and son pointed to areas of agreement among them. “We agree, for example,” says Rice, “on the importance of the United States playing a responsible, principled leadership role in the world.”
And Cameron-Rice has echoed the same: “…we agree that America is the greatest nation the world has ever seen, and thus, we believe that America has an important role to play as a force for liberty and justice on the world stage.”
They find disagreement “on most of the standard Republican/Democrat disagreements,” said her son.
“We disagree on things like choice,” says Rice. “I’m pro-choice. He’s pro-life.”
In the same NPR interview, Rice had been speaking of the national divide being experienced right now between two opposing political parties. She blamed the White House for this division:
“…we are now burdened with leadership in the White House that thrives on dividing us and pitting Americans against each other. We absolutely have to move past that to a point of a recognition that we are all in this boat together, we sink or swim together.”
Turning to her disagreement with her son on the abortion issue, Rice stated, “That’s the kind of difference that we ought to be able to respect.”
Rice is currently on Joe Biden’s shortlist for vice president.
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