Vice President Kamala Harris sought to deflect criticism over the administration’s dealing with of the border disaster, her stance on transgender rights and her ties to President Joe Biden in a combative interview Wednesday on Fox News.
“Let me be very clear, my presidency won’t be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency, and like each new president that is available in to workplace, I’ll carry my life experiences, my skilled experiences and recent and new concepts,” Harris stated.
The Democratic presidential nominee’s first formal interview with the outlet ran for almost half an hour, capping a day the place Harris sought to broaden her attraction to conservative voters with an occasion in suburban Philadelphia that includes dozens of Republican officers who had endorsed her marketing campaign. The interview between Harris and Fox chief political anchor Bret Baier was regularly testy, with each regularly interrupting and talking over one another.
Baier opened the interview by urgent Harris on immigration, which voters have pegged as one of many defining problems with the election.
Harris argued that the administration has taken the difficulty of immigration critically and that most of the issues they had been going through pre-dated her and Biden taking workplace, and hit at Trump for his function in blocking a bipartisan invoice that may have surged assets to deal with the border surge.
“We’ve had a damaged immigration system transcending by the way in which Donald Trump’s administration even earlier than. Let’s all be trustworthy about that. I’ve no pleasure in saying that it is a good immigration system,” she stated.
The vp stated she and Biden had supplied laws to deal with the immigration system inside hours of taking workplace.
“Our focus has been on fixing an issue,” she stated.
But Baier pressed Harris on the variety of undocumented migrants who had entered the nation in recent times, and confronted Harris with a video clip of a member of the family blaming the Biden-Harris administration for the dying of a lady murdered by somebody within the nation illegally.
Asked if she would apologize to that household, Harris responded that they had been “tragic instances.”
“I’m so sorry for her loss. I’m so sorry for her loss, sincerely,” Harris added. “I really feel terrible for what she and her household have skilled.”
But she additionally insisted that Trump had stymied efforts to discover a bipartisan answer to the issue, saying: “Let’s discuss what is occurring proper now with a person who doesn’t wish to take part in options.”
During the interview, Baier additionally performed an commercial from the Trump marketing campaign attacking Harris for statements through the 2020 presidential marketing campaign during which she stated she would use taxpayer {dollars} to pay for gender transition surgical procedures for prisoners.
Harris responded by noting a latest New York Times report that federal prisoners had acquired gender affirming care throughout Trump’s administration.
“I believe frankly that advert from the Trump marketing campaign is a bit of little bit of like throwing you already know stones if you’re dwelling in a glass home,” Harris stated. “I’ll observe the legislation, and it’s a legislation that Donald Trump really adopted.”
While Harris earned plaudits from supporters who applauded her vigorous trade with Baier, one second through the exchanged appeared destined to turn into fodder in future marketing campaign advertisements.
When the Fox News host defended Trump by saying the Republican didn’t actively advocate the therapy for transgender inmates, Harris stated candidates needed to take duty “for what occurred in your administration.”
The line may present a handy soundbite for Trump at a second Harris’ marketing campaign is looking for distance from Biden. Harris devoted vital time through the Fox interview to arguing she represented “a brand new era of management,” after incomes criticism for saying throughout an interview with The View final week that she couldn’t consider a call she would have approached in another way than the present president.
Still, requested what voters ought to flip the web page from—notably with polls exhibiting many sad with the route of the nation—Harris centered her response towards her opponent: “The final decade during which we now have been burdened with the type of rhetoric coming from Donald Trump.”