Vice President Kamala Harris showed her true colors Thursday in her first TV interview since becoming the Democratic nominee – admitting her lefty “values have not changed” even though her positions on major policies have.
In a sit-down with CNN, Harris, 59, defended various backtracks when asked if voters can know what they’re getting — as Republicans question the sincerity of her pivots to the political center on immigration, healthcare and energy policy ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
“I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed,” Harris told Dana Bash in her first sit-down since President Biden dropped out of the race on July 21.
The vice president used the phrase repeatedly through the nearly hour-long interview to defend herself against allegations of political opportunism.
Harris’ abandoned policy stances include her pledges to eliminate private health insurance, decriminalize illegal border crossings, ban fracking for oil and natural gas, and ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035 — each of those made in 2019 when the then-California senator was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.
Earlier this month, Harris floated and then also backed away from plans for price controls on groceries after widespread criticism — with former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, using that proposal as an opening to nickname the veep “Comrade Kamala.”
Trump, 78, tried for weeks to goad Harris into giving her first interview as a candidate in an attempt to end her “honeymoon” phase of soft press coverage.
“I look so forward to Debating Comrade Comrade Kamala Harris and exposing her for the fraud she is,” Trump wrote on social media after the interview aired. “Harris has changed every one of her long held positions, on everything. America will never allow an Election WEAPONIZING MARXIST TO BE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S.”
‘Deadlines around time’
Harris defended her backtracks on banning cars powered by gasoline and banning the extraction of oil and natural gas using hydraulic fracturing by saying that her past adherence to more fervent environmentalism was correct in its sense of urgency.
“You mentioned the Green New Deal. I have always believed and — I’ve worked on it — that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time,” Harris said, often looking down as she spoke.
“We did that with the Inflation Reduction Act. We have set goals for the United States of America and by extension the globe around when we should meet certain standards for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions as an example. That value has not changed.”
The Inflation Reduction Act included $369 million in environmental spending, including for electric vehicle charging stations and tax credits for those vehicles and home energy efficiency improvements, with a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 to 40% below their levels in the year 2005.
‘I will not ban fracking’
Harris insisted in the interview that she would not ban fracking without explaining why she changed her mind — as that prior stance threatens to haunt her in swing-state Pennsylvania.
“In 2019 you said, ‘There is no question, I’m in favor of banning fracking.’ … Do you still want to ban fracking?” Bash asked.
“No. And I made that clear [as Biden’s running mate] on the debate stage in 2020. that I would not ban fracking. As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking,” Harris told Bash.
When pressed, Harris said that “in 2020, I made very clear where I stand. We are in 2024 and I’ve not changed that position, nor will I going forward. I kept my word, and I will keep my word.”
“What made you change that position?” Bash asked.
“Let’s be clear, my values have not changed. I believe it is very important that we take seriously what we must do to guard against what is a clear crisis in terms of the climate,” Harris replied.
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“And to do that, we can do what we have accomplished thus far. The inflation Reduction Act… That tells me, from my experience as vice president, we can do it without banning fracking. In fact, Dana… I cast the tie breaking vote that actually increased leases for fracking, yeah, as vice president.”
When Bash pressed on whether there was “some policy or scientific data that you saw” to inspire her change of heart, Harris said, “What I have seen is that we can, we can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.”
Border czar work ‘resulted in a number of benefits’
Harris argued that she was successful in her role as Biden’s point person on stemming illegal immigration — even though overall illegal crossings surged to new record highs for three years in a row.
Harris made a single brief visit to the border area as the so-called “border czar” — after Biden tasked her in March 2021 with working with Mexico and three Central American countries to tackle the “root causes” of illegal immigration.
“Well, first of all, the root causes work that I did as vice president, that I was asked to do by the president, has actually resulted in a number of benefits, including historic investments by American businesses in that region,” Harris said.
“The number of immigrants coming from that region has actually reduced since we began that work.”
Biden and Harris axed Trump’s policies on the border during their first year in office, including halting construction of his US-Mexico border wall and repudiating the “Remain in Mexico” policy requiring asylum seekers to stay south of the border pending US court decisions.
Federal data show that the volume of illegal border-crossers from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras is down, but slightly — with a combined more than 945,000 apprehensions of citizens of those countries in the most recent 10 months of data, versus about 955,000 in the same period one year prior, 1,151,000 the year before that and 1,086,00 the year Harris began in the role.
But overall illegal border crossings surged higher during that time — topping out at nearly 2.5 million in fiscal 2023 — with Republicans blaming “pull” factors including the fact that most illegal crossers were allowed into the US to await badly backlogged asylum proceedings. Those migrants are entitled to work permits after six months of waiting.
‘There should be consequences’ for crossing border
The vice president indicated that she no longer supports decriminalizing illegal border crossings — though she didn’t precisely say so.
“I believe there should be consequences. We have laws that have to be followed and enforced that address and deal with people who cross our border illegally, and there should be consequences,” Harris said.
“And let’s be clear, in this race, I’m the only person who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations who traffic in guns, drugs and human beings. I’m the only person in this race who actually served a border state as attorney general to enforce our laws, and I would enforce our laws as president going forward, I recognize the problem.”
The term decriminalization can be used to mean reducing the severity of punishment rather than entirely legalizing proscribed conduct.
‘She probably goes back to her room and gets sick to her stomach’
Trump ruthlessly ripped Harris over the interview — after spending weeks referring to his election rival as “Comrade Kamala” and asserting she is pushing the “Maduro plan” — in reference to Venezuela’s socialist leader Nicolas Maduro.
“She probably goes back to her room and gets sick to her stomach when she says what she has to say, because she’s a Marxist,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan on Thursday afternoon, moments after the first clips of Harris’ interview were released.
“Now she’s saying, ‘Oh, we want to build a strong border.’ Where has she been for three and a half years?” Trump exclaimed.
Republicans have decried Harris, who also pledged in the CNN interview to name a Republican to her Cabinet, as a political “chameleon” who is falsely claiming to have moderated her positions in a bid to be the first woman elected president.
“I just saw Comrade Kamala Harris’ answer to a very weakly-phrased question, a question that was put in more as a matter of defense than curiosity, but her answer rambled incoherently, and declared her ‘values haven’t changed’,” Trump wrote Thursday night in a Truth Social post.
“On that I agree, her values haven’t changed – The Border is going to remain open, not closed, there will be Free Healthcare for Illegal Aliens, Sanctuary Cities, No Cash Bail, Gun Confiscation, Zero Fracking, a Ban on Gasoline-Powered Cars, Private Healthcare will be abolished, a 70-80% tax rate will be put in place, and she will Defund the Police. America will become a WASTELAND!”
