Savannah, Georgia
CNN
—

Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday gave her most comprehensive explanation yet of why she’s changed her positions on fracking and immigration. She told CNN’s Dana Bash that her values ​​haven’t changed, but that her time as vice president has offered a new perspective on some of the country’s most pressing issues.

In the exclusive interview with CNN, Harris also said that if elected, she would appoint a Republican to serve in her Cabinet.

She first described the phone call from President Joe Biden in which he told her he planned to drop his candidacy for a second term after his disastrous debate performance, stopping short of saying she would change Biden’s policy on arms sales to Israel.

And she brushed aside her rival’s questions about her racial identity, rejecting Donald Trump’s suggestion that she “just happened to be black.”

“Same old, tired script,” she said. “Next question, please.”

All in all, the joint interview in Savannah with her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — their first since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee — offered one of the clearest glimpses into Harris’s positions and her plans for the presidency.

When asked to outline her goals for Day One should she win, Harris did not name specific steps, such as signing executive actions or orders.

Instead, she reiterated her focus on strengthening the economy: “First and foremost, one of my highest priorities is to do what we can to support and strengthen the middle class.”

In the post-convention phase of the race, Harris wants to address criticism of her record and strengthen her narrative to American voters by outlining how she would govern if elected president.

Harris was under pressure to spell out her policy positions in more detail during a sit-down interview. Her last-minute campaign was fueled not by detailed proposals or policy documents, but by Democrats fired up by the new competitive election.

When Bash questioned her positions on fracking and decriminalization of illegal border crossings, Harris attempted to explain why she had changed her position.

“How should voters view some of the changes that you’ve made?” Bash asked Harris. “Is it because you’re more experienced now and have learned more about the information? Is it because you ran in the Democratic primary for president? And should they feel comfortable and confident that what you’re saying now is going to be your policy going forward?”

‘Next question please’: Harris responds to Trump attacks in interview with CNN’s Dana Bash

Harris said her values ​​had not changed despite the shifts in her views.

“I think the most important and significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is that my values ​​have not changed,” she said. “You mentioned the Green New Deal. I have always believed — and I have worked to believe — that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent issue to which we need to apply metrics that mean we hold ourselves to deadlines.”

Her campaign team later said Harris no longer supports the Green New Deal, a broad proposal to address climate change first introduced in 2019.

At a September 2019 CNN-hosted event on the climate crisis, Harris was asked whether she would push for a federal ban on fracking on her first day in office.

“There’s no question that I support a ban on fracking, and we start doing what we can do on public lands on Day 1,” Harris said at the time. By the time she became Biden’s running mate, she had backed away from that position and even cast the deciding vote to expand fracking leases, as she noted to Bash.

On Thursday, Harris pointed to the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which provided record investments to combat climate change, as an example of her climate performance.

“We have set targets for the United States of America and by extension the world, around when we have to meet certain standards for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, for example. That value has not changed,” she said.

“What I’ve seen is that we can grow and create a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking,” she added.

And she pointed to her record as California’s attorney general, where she prosecuted gangs accused of trafficking people across the border, as an indication of her values ​​on immigration.

“My values ​​haven’t changed. That’s the reality. And four years as vice president, I’ll tell you, one of the aspects, to get back to your point, is the extensive travel around the country,” she said, referring to her 17 visits to Georgia since becoming vice president. “I believe it’s important to build consensus, and it’s important to find a common place of understanding of where we can actually solve problems.”

Harris explains why she would appoint a Republican to serve in her cabinet if elected

It has become a tradition to do a joint interview ahead of a presidential election in the first weeks of the new partnership. Speaking alongside Harris, Walz said he was excited about “the idea of ​​inspiring America to what can be.”

He also defended himself against accusations that he concealed the truth in various aspects of his resume and background, including his military service and in his description of his family’s fertility problems. He said he may have been inaccurate in his language and that he “certainly takes responsibility for my mistakes if I make them.”

But he pushed back against Republican attacks that he said were aimed at his family.

“If it’s not this, then it’s an attack on my children for showing love to me, or it’s an attack on my dog. I’m not going to do that,” he said.

For Democrats, the economy remains a political weakness. Polls show more voters trust Trump to manage the economy and tame inflation, though they have fallen since Harris entered the race.

Harris unveiled an economic policy plan earlier this month aimed at lowering the cost of food, housing and child care, in part by cracking down on corporations. Her proposals include efforts to combat rent-seeking and increase construction of affordable housing.

Her plans did not amount to a wholesale departure from the policies Biden has pursued during his term. But she has chosen to focus more centrally on discussing affordability as a messaging strategy rather than job creation or manufacturing gains, as Biden has done.

On Thursday, Bash pressed Harris to explain why those proposals had not been implemented during the three and a half years of the Biden administration: “Why haven’t you implemented them yet?

“We had to recover as an economy and we did,” she said, pointing to efforts to curb inflation, lower prescription drug costs and cut taxes for families.

“There is more to do, but this is good work,” she said.

Harris also failed to create any distance between herself and Biden on the Middle East when asked directly whether she would do certain things differently, including limiting arms sales to Israel.

“We need to make a deal. This war needs to end and we need to make a deal that involves freeing the hostages,” she said.

Harris showed no remorse when he described Biden as “extraordinarily strong” in the days following his disastrous performance at the CNN debate in Atlanta.

“He has the intelligence, the dedication, the judgment and the spirit that I believe the American people rightly deserve in their president,” she said.

Harris described the Sunday in July when Biden, after weeks of pressure, announced his decision to withdraw from the race. She said she was at home making pancakes and bacon for her nieces when the phone rang.

“It was Joe Biden, and he was telling me what he had decided to do. And I asked him, ‘Are you sure?’ And he said, ‘Yes,’” she recalled, adding, “My first thought wasn’t about me, to be honest with you. My first thought was about him.”

Harris embraced her pledge to act for “all Americans” as president, saying in the interview that she would appoint a Republican to her Cabinet if elected, though she said she had no specific name in mind. It revives a tradition in recent decades — not embraced by Trump or Biden — of presidents appointing at least one member of the opposing party to their Cabinet.

“I have 68 days left before this election, so I’m not putting the cart before the horse,” she said. “But I think I would. I think it’s really important. I’ve spent my career inviting diversity of opinion. I think it’s important to have people at the table when important decisions are being made who have different points of view and experiences. And I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my Cabinet who was Republican.”

Harris, who rarely discusses the groundbreaking nature of her candidacy during the campaign, acknowledged in the interview that there were moments when she felt the weight of history — including when she saw a photo of one of her young great-nieces staring at her as she delivered her speech at last week’s convention.

“I’m running because I believe I am the best person at this time to do this for all Americans, regardless of race and gender,” she said. “But I saw that picture and it moved me deeply.

This story has been updated with additional reporting.