Kamala Harris defends policy stances and shares plan for office in first major interview

Kamala Harris sat for her first interview as the Democratic presidential nominee with CNN’s Dana Bash alongside her running mate, Tim Walz, on Thursday, and defended her shifts on certain policy issues over the years and her support for Joe Biden.

In the interview, which was taped in Savannah, Georgia, earlier on Thursday, the vice-president said her highest priority upon taking office would be to “support and strengthen the middle class” through policies including increasing the child tax credit, curtailing price gouging on everyday goods and increasing access to affordable housing – all policies that she has announced since she started campaigning for the presidency.

Harris also told how the president shared with her his decision not to continue running for re-election, a first public retelling of that moment. She said she was making breakfast with her family, including her nieces, and was just sitting down to do a puzzle when the phone rang, she said.

“I asked him, are you sure? And he said yes. And that’s how I learned about it.” As far as whether she asked for his endorsement or he offered it, she said: “He was very clear that he was going to support me.”

“My first thought was not about me, to be honest with you, my first thought was about him,” she said, adding that history will remember Biden’s presidency as transformative.

Harris defended Biden, saying she had no regrets about supporting his re-election before his decision to leave the race, despite concerns over his age and acuity. She said serving as Biden’s vice-president had been “one of the greatest honors” of her career and that Biden had the “intelligence, commitment, judgment and disposition that the American people deserve in their president”, adding that the former president, Donald Trump, “has none of that”.

She followed the Biden administration’s line on the war in Gaza, echoing the remarks she made on the topic during the Democratic national convention, where anti-war protests drew thousands outside and ceasefire delegates sought to pressure her on the issue inside. She said she was “unequivocal and unwavering” in her commitment to Israel’s defense and would not curtail US weapons sent to Israel to use in the war. “Far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed,” she said, and added: “We have to get a deal done” to bring hostages held by Hamas home and end the war.

She also touted the Biden administration’s work to restore the economy after the pandemic, pointing to capped insulin costs, the current inflation rate of under 3% and increases in US manufacturing jobs. “I’ll say that that’s good work,” she said. “There’s more to do, but that’s good work.”

Harris explained her changes in positions on issues such as fracking and immigration by saying her “values had not changed”. On fracking, she said she made clear in the 2020 debate that she no longer supports a ban, and that as president she would not ban fracking. She added that she took the climate crisis seriously but said: “We can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.”

On immigration, Bash pointed to a moment when Harris raised her hand to indicate she believed the border should be decriminalized, asking if she still believed that. Harris said she thought laws should be followed and enforced on immigration and noted that she was the only candidate in the race who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations.

She also said she would appoint a Republican to her cabinet if she wins, though she didn’t have a specific Republican or position in mind.

“I have spent my career inviting diversity of opinion,” she said. “I think it’s important to have people at the table when some of the most important decisions are being made that have different views, different experiences. And I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my cabinet who was a Republican.”

She quickly cast off a question about Trump’s comments that she “happened to turn Black” in recent years: “Same old, tired playbook,” she said. “Next question, please.”

The interview narrowly met a self-imposed timeline Harris set for a sit-down interview, which she promised would happen by the end of August. It came less than two weeks before the first scheduled debate between Harris and Trump, planned for 10 September on ABC.

Harris and Walz conducted the interview while on a bus ride around the Savannah, Georgia, area as part of a whirlwind tour of the US since they took over the Democratic ticket.

Harris has received criticism from across the political spectrum for not doing an on-the-record interview with the media since she started running for president. After the CNN interview was set, Republicans also criticized the joint interview with Walz for being pre-recorded and not live.

Before the interview, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, posted on Twitter/X: “BREAKING: I have gotten ahold of the full Kamala Harris CNN interview” alongside a clip from the 2007 Miss Teen America pageant in which a contestant garbled an answer about Americans not knowing geography, rambling about “like such as South Africa – and the Iraq, everywhere like such as”.

Walz answered a few questions during the joint interview, though Harris largely led the campaign’s responses.

Walz has faced scrutiny over misstatements and exaggerations he has made about his time in the national guard and about the specific fertility treatments his wife used. He did not explain in depth why he made these comments, instead saying that he spoke candidly and passionately. In one comment, he claimed he carried weapons of war in combat, which he did not (he was not deployed to a war zone). He said that comment came after a school shooting and his grammar was not correct. “I think people know me. They know who I am. They know where my heart is,” he said.

“If it’s not this, it’s an attack on my children for showing love for me, or it’s an attack on my dog,” he said, referring to recent Republican criticisms of him. “The one thing I’ll never do is I’ll never demean another service member in any way. I never have and I never will.”

Related: ‘We are the underdogs’: Harris tells Georgia voters ‘hard work’ can win critical swing state

Bash brought up two key moments from the Democratic convention: Walz’s teenage son, Gus, crying and saying “that’s my dad” as his the Minnesota governor took the stage, and an image of one of Harris’s great-nieces looking on as Harris gave her acceptance speech.

Walz said his son’s reaction was “such a visceral emotional moment” that he was grateful to experience.

Harris, who has not spoken much about how her win could break glass ceilings, said she was “deeply touched” by the photo and found it “very humbling” while saying: “I am running because I believe I am the best person to do this job at this moment for all Americans, regardless of race and gender.”

It is unclear if Harris will start doing more media interviews as she continues on the campaign trail. As some commentators on CNN noted before the interview aired on Thursday, increasing the frequency of interviews makes it less likely that each one becomes the topic of intense scrutiny and fixation like the CNN event became.

Trump reacted to the interview on Truth Social, saying simply: “BORING!!!”

? This article was amended on 30 August 2024. Thousands of anti-war demonstrators gathered at the Democratic national convention, not tens of thousands, as was originally published.