savannah, georgia — Vice President Kamala Harris said Thursday “my values have not changed,” as she was questioned along with her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, in their first major television interview of their presidential campaign.
The interview with CNN’s Dana Bash gives Harris a chance to quell criticism while giving her a fresh platform to define her campaign before her debate with former President Donald Trump set for September 10.
But it also carries risk as her team tries to build on momentum from the ticket shakeup following President Joe Biden’s exit and last week’s Democratic National Convention.
The full CNN interview was taped at 1:45 p.m. at Kim’s Cafe, a local Black-owned restaurant in Savannah, Georgia, and excerpts were released Thursday afternoon.
Harris was asked about changes in her policies over the years, specifically her reversals on fracking and decriminalizing illegal border crossings.
“I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed,” Harris replied.
Harris also brushed off Trump’s questioning of her racial identity after the former president said she “happened to turn Black.” Harris, who is of Black and South Asian heritage, said it was the “same old, tired playbook.”
She also said she’d name a Republican to serve in her Cabinet if she were elected, though she didn’t have a name in mind.
Joint interviews during an election year are a fixture in politics; Biden and Harris, Trump and Mike Pence, Barack Obama and Biden — all did them at a similar point in the race. The difference is those other candidates had all done solo interviews, too. Harris hasn’t yet done an in-depth interview since she became her party’s standard bearer five weeks ago, though she did sit for several while she was still Biden’s running mate.
Harris and Walz are still introducing themselves to voters, unlike Trump and Biden, of whom people had near-universal awareness and opinion.
They were in the midst of a two-day bus tour through southeast Georgia that culminated with an evening rally in Savannah. Harris campaign officials believe that in order to win the state over Trump in November, she must make inroads in GOP strongholds across the state.
Democrats’ enthusiasm about their vote in November has surged over the past few months, according to polling from Gallup. About 8 in 10 Democrats now say they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting, compared with 55% in March.
But at a packed arena on Thursday, Harris cast her nascent campaign as the underdog and encouraged the crowd to work hard to elect her in November.
“We’re here to speak truth and one of the things that we know is that this is going to be a tight race to the end,” she said.
Harris went through a list of Democratic concerns: that Trump will further restrict women’s rights after he appointed three judges to the U.S. Supreme Court who helped overturn Roe, that he’d repeal the Affordable Care Act, and that given new immunity powers granted presidents by the U.S. Supreme Court, “imagine Donald Trump with no guard rails.”
After the CNN interview, Walz peeled off for other political events out of state, and Harris continued in Georgia, stopping in at Dottie’s Market in Savannah on Thursday, chatting with the owner’s mom as crowds watched from the street where she told voters she’d be rolling out “basically a tax credit for startups, for small businesses who are starting out.”
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