Vice President Kamala Harris said in a highly anticipated first interview on CNN that “her values have not changed” on issues such as climate change and immigration, while Donald Trump accuses her of being “a weather vane.”
• Also read: First interview for Kamala Harris: “She’s going to have to outperform,” says an expert
“The most important and significant aspect of my political plans and decisions is that my values have not changed,” she told journalist Dana Bash from Savannah in the southern state of Georgia, where she is campaigning.
“I have always believed (…) that climate change was a reality, that it is an urgent issue” and that the United States must meet “targets” in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, said the 59-year-old Democratic candidate, in a first excerpt broadcast by the channel.
“My belief about our need to secure the border (with Mexico, editor’s note) has not changed,” added Kamala Harris.
She also said, this time in a quote shared in writing on CNN’s website, that “it would be a good thing for the American people if there was a Republican minister in (her) government,” in the event of a victory on November 5.
“Weather vane”
Republicans accuse the vice president of being inconsistent in her ideas.
They accuse him of seeking to bury progressive positions taken in the past, against hydraulic fracturing (or fracking), a method of extracting hydrocarbons denounced by environmental defenders, or against the construction of a wall on the southern border.
“She’s the worst kind of weather vane,” accused her Republican opponent Donald Trump on Thursday, campaigning in Michigan. “She’s incompetent, she doesn’t know how to do interviews,” he added.
The Democratic candidate had had a few quick exchanges with reporters since she took over from President Joe Biden, who crashed out of the race on July 21.
But she was under pressure to agree to a more in-depth, formal interview.
The interview is scheduled to be broadcast in full at 9pm local time (1am GMT).
“False step”
The 59-year-old Democrat was accompanied by her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, which Donald Trump seized on to attack his rival.
“‘Tampon Tim’ should not be present during the interview to help with Kamala’s inevitable missteps,” he wrote on his Truth Social network.
Trump supporters gave Tim Walz this mocking nickname in reference to a decision the governor made on the distribution of sanitary protection in schools.
The former president, who like Kamala Harris is scouring the swing states – those states that promise to be particularly contested in November – is heading to Michigan on Thursday, then Wisconsin.
“Having an interview with the duo of candidates in the summer has been a tradition in election campaigns for twenty years,” one of the spokespersons for the Democratic candidate, Ian Sams, stressed in X.
Trump and Musk
Donald Trump, for his part, has had numerous opportunities to answer questions posed by journalists or other interlocutors, questions that are more or less difficult depending on the case.
At the end of July, he had heated exchanges with an association of African-American journalists.
On August 13, he had a long conversation with his very wealthy supporter Elon Musk, in a much more comfortable, even downright friendly, atmosphere.
According to the polls, the duel with Donald Trump remains extremely undecided, particularly in certain highly coveted states, even if the Democratic candidate is in a better position than Joe Biden was.
After this interview, the next expected highlight of this extraordinary election campaign will be the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, organized on September 10 in Pennsylvania by ABC.
