Harris says her values haven't changed, despite policy reversals

In her first interview since becoming the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris said Thursday that her recent reversals on critical policies resulted from her time in the White House, giving her a new perspective on the issues.

During her failed 2020 presidential bid, Ms. Harris advocated for a national ban on fracking, the decriminalization of illegal border crossings and the elimination of private health insurance.

Her campaign staff has walked back all those stances and others through statements over the past few weeks, though Ms. Harris herself has been silent on them.

In her interview with Dana Bash, according to a clip released Thursday afternoon by CNN, Ms. Harris said that those reversals don't mean her values are different.

“My values have not changed. So that is the reality of it. And four years of being vice president, I’ll tell you, one of the aspects, to your point, is traveling the country extensively,” she said.

“I believe it is important to build consensus and it is important to find a common place of understanding where we can actually solve problems,” she told CNN.

Despite the walkbacks, Ms. Harris insisted in the CNN interview that she remains true to those unchanged values, including the support of climate-related initiatives such as the Green New Deal.

“I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed,” she said. “You mentioned the Green New Deal. I always have believed — and I have worked on it — that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time.”

During a 2019 climate crisis town hall, Ms. Harris said there is “no question” that she is in favor of banning fracking on the national level. Since rising to the top of the Democratic ticket, her campaign has insisted she supports fracking.

On Thursday, Ms. Harris pointed to the Biden administration’s climate initiatives, including his so-called Inflation Reduction Act, saying that her commitment to climate issues remains firm.

“We have set goals for the United States of America and, by extension, the globe, around when we should meet certain standards for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, as an example. That value has not changed,” she told CNN.

Although Ms. Harris once called for decriminalizing illegal border crossings, she has taken a harsher stance toward illegal immigration as a presidential candidate.

However, this week her campaign pledged to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build a wall along the southern border, a project she once dismissed as “un-American” and a medieval fantasy of then-President Trump.

Ms. Harris said as the California attorney general, she prosecuted gangs accused of cross-border trafficking, which she said shows that she will be tough on immigration.

Former President Donald Trump's campaign seized on Ms. Harris' claim that her values haven't changed, releasing a statement with a laundry list of 24 progressive ideas that Ms. Harris has supported. The list included abolishing ICE, allowing minors to change their gender without parental consent, ending cash bail, offering mass amnesty for unvetted illegal immigrants, abolishing private health care, banning plastic straws and banning gas-powered vehicles.

"It's who Kamala Harris is — weak, failed and dangerously liberal," the Trump campaign said in the statement.

Ms. Harris also said in the interview that her experience as vice president will enable her to be president for “all Americans” and vowed to appoint a Republican to her Cabinet.

“I’ve got 68 days to go with this election, so I’m not putting the cart before the horse,” she said. “But I would, I think. I think it’s really important. I have spent my career inviting diversity of opinion. I think it’s important to have people at that 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 Cabinet who was a Republican,” she said.