SAVANNAH, Georgia (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris defended moving away from some of her more liberal positions in her first major television interview of her presidential campaign on Thursday, but stressed that her “values have not changed” even as she “looks for consensus.”
Sitting down with her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Harris was asked specifically about her about-face on banning fracking and decriminalizing illegal border crossings, positions she took during her last presidential run. She confirmed that she does not want to ban fracking, an energy production process essential to the economy of swing state Pennsylvania, and said there “should be consequences” for people who cross the border without permission.
“I think the most important and meaningful aspect of my political perspective and decisions is that my values have not changed,” Harris said.
She continued: “I think it is important to reach a consensus. It is important to find a common position with which we can actually solve the problem.”
The interview with CNN’s Dana Bash came at a time when voters are still trying to learn more about the Democratic slate of candidates in an unusually brief period of time. President Joe Biden finished his re-election bid just five weeks ago. The interview focused primarily on policy issues. Harris tried to show that she holds more moderate positions on issues Republicans call extreme, while Walz defended previous false statements about his biography.
Harris had not given an in-depth interview since becoming her party’s front-runner five weeks ago, although she sat in on several interviews when she was Biden’s running mate.
She said working with Biden was “one of the greatest honors of my career,” and she described the moment he called her to announce his resignation and support.
“He told me what he had decided and … I asked him, ‘Are you sure?’ and he said, ‘Yes,’ and that’s how I found out about it.”
She said she did not ask Biden to support her because “he made it very clear that he would support me.”
Harris defended the administration’s record on the southern border and immigration, pointing out that it is her job to address the “root causes” of border crossings in other countries.
“We have laws that must be followed and enforced that target people who cross our border illegally, and there should be consequences,” Harris said.
When asked about Israel’s war in Gaza following the October 7 Hamas attack, Harris said, “I stand unequivocally and unwaveringly in defense of Israel and its ability to defend itself.” But the vice president also reiterated what she has been saying for months, namely that the number of civilian casualties during the Israeli offensive is too high.
She also rejected Republican Donald Trump’s questioning of her ethnic identity after he falsely claimed she changed her appearance for political reasons and “turned black by accident.” Harris, who is black and of South Asian descent, said Trump’s claim was “the same old, hackneyed script.”
“Next question please,” she said.
Trump and Harris will debate on September 10. In a post Thursday night, Trump appeared to be paying close attention to the interview. After the debate was mentioned, he wrote, “I am so excited to debate Comrade Kamala Harris and expose her for the fraud she is.”
Trump went on to say that his Democratic opponent “has changed every one of her long-held positions, on every issue. America will never allow a Marxist who uses elections as a weapon to become President of the United States.”
The debate is the first time Harris and Trump have ever met. The two opponents have only met once before in the same room, when Harris attended Trump’s joint speeches to Congress as a senator.
At the beginning of the interview, Walz watched quietly and nodded as Harris made her main points. He was later asked about false statements, starting with the way he described his 24 years of service in the National Guard.
In a 2018 video clip once distributed by the Harris-Walz campaign, Walz spoke out against gun violence, saying, “We can make sure that these weapons of war that I carried in war are the only place where those weapons are.”
Critics said the “that I wore in war” comment suggested Walz was portraying himself as someone who had spent time in a combat zone. He said Thursday night that he made a slip of the tongue after a school shooting, adding: “My grammar is not always correct.”
When asked about comments suggesting that he and his wife had conceived their children through artificial insemination when in fact they had undergone other fertility treatments, he said he thought most Americans understood what he meant and sided with Republicans who oppose abortion rights.
According to a Gallup poll, Democrats’ enthusiasm for their November election has risen sharply in recent months, with about 8 in 10 Democrats saying they are more enthusiastic about voting now than usual, compared with 55 percent in March.
This gives them an enthusiasm advantage they did not have earlier in the year. Among Republicans, enthusiasm has risen much less over the same period, and about two-thirds of Republicans now say they are more enthusiastic about the election than usual.
At a rally in a packed arena in Savannah on Thursday, Harris portrayed her fledgling campaign as an outsider and urged the crowd to support her election in November.
“We are here to tell the truth and we know one thing: it will be a close race until the end,” she said.
Harris ran through a list of Democrats’ concerns: that Trump would further restrict women’s rights after appointing three justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who helped overturn Roe; that he would repeal the Affordable Care Act; and that one must “imagine a Donald Trump without guardrails” given the up-to-date immunity rights the Supreme Court grants presidents.
The rally capped a two-day bus tour of southeast Georgia. Harris is conducting another blitz campaigning with Biden in Detroit and Pittsburgh on Labor Day as the election quickly approaches. The first mail-in ballots will be sent to voters in just two weeks.
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Long reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Sagar Meghani and Amelia Thomson DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.
