Takeaways from Kamala Harris’ CNN town hall
CNN
By Eric Bradner, Gregory Krieg, Arit John and Daniel Strauss, CNN
(CNN) — Vice President Kamala Harris told a Pennsylvania crowd at CNN’s town hall Wednesday night that she considers Republican rival Donald Trump a fascist.
Harris also pitched her economic plan, argued her presidency wouldn’t be a continuation of Joe Biden’s administration and condemned Trump for his role in thwarting a bipartisan border security bill in front of a Pennsylvania crowd of undecided but persuadable voters.
The town hall comes 13 days from Election Night, with Trump and Harris locked in a tight battle for the Great Lakes swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and the Sun Belt battlegrounds of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.
Here are some takeaways from Harris’ CNN town hall:
Yes, Harris thinks Trump is a fascist
Harris was asked Wednesday night if she considers Trump a fascist.
“Yes, I do,” she said. But, she added, she doesn’t want voters to take her word for it.
Harris pointed to senior military leaders who served under Trump and have said the former president is a fascist – including the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, and Trump’s former White House chief of staff, retired Marine general John Kelly.
“I also believe that the people who know him best on this subject should be trusted,” Harris said.
The vice president’s condemnation of Trump as a threat to the United States’ founding principles is a window into how she is trying to win over the small number of undecided voters — including educated, suburban moderate Republicans and independents — in the race’s closing weeks. She is casting Trump as a threat to democracy, rather than focusing on her policy differences with the former president.
Harris said more than 400 members of Republican presidential administrations have endorsed her – and she named former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, who has campaigned with her, and former Vice President Dick Cheney, specifically.
She said those Republicans’ support for her campaign is motivated by “a legitimate fear, based on Donald Trump’s words and actions, that he will not obey an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Harris distances herself from Biden, promises ‘a new generation of leadership’
Harris has faced repeated questions on the trail over how – and to what degree – she would break from Biden on policy. Mostly, she has brushed them off.
In one particularly awkward exchange, she told the hosts of ABC’s “The View,” who asked what she would’ve done differently from the president, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”
On Wednesday night, though, Harris seemed more comfortable with the proposition and argued that, if she was elected, change would follow.
“My administration will not be a continuation of the Biden administration,” Harris said. “I bring to this role my own ideas and my own experience. I represent a new generation of leadership on a number of issues and believe that we have to actually take new approaches.”
After ticking off a few major policy plans, like having Medicare cover home health care for the elderly, Harris returned to what she described as “a new approach.”
“I bring a whole set of different experiences to this job,” she said.
Pressed by CNN’s Anderson Cooper about why she hasn’t, during her time as vice president, been more assertive on those points, Harris was short on details – later on she would present a Middle East policy identical to Biden’s – but hammered home the talking point.
“There was a lot that was done (during the Biden administration), but there’s more to do,” Harris said. “I’m pointing out things that need to be done, that haven’t been done.”
Border security and migration are a tricky area for the vice president
By both Cooper and audience members, the vice president was pressed on border security.
She was asked on the record number of illegal border crossings that occurred during the Biden administration in spite of multiple executive orders. That flow had only begun to shrink after a major executive action earlier this year, Cooper noted, and asked why Biden and Harris hadn’t done something sooner.
Harris argued that the Biden administration, and she personally, believed that executive actions were just short-term solutions and that a long-term fix could only happen through a bipartisan agreement in Congress. She stressed the need for a large bipartisan bill on border security.
“Let’s just fix the problem” Harris said multiple times.
She contrasted that with Trump’s record on border security where she mocked him for failing to fulfill his promise to build a border wall across the United States’ southern border and make Mexico pay for it.
“I think of what he did and how he did it didn’t make much sense because he didn’t do much of anything,” she said.
Harris also pushed back on the idea that she was soft on border security and immigration, saying “people have to earn it” in gaining American citizenship and that she wanted “to strengthen our border.”
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
