Vice President Kamala Harris avoided directly addressing her numerous policy changes when ABC News anchor Linsey Davis provided her the opportunity to respond during her Tuesday debate against former President Donald Trump.
Harris and Trump competed in their first and only scheduled presidential debate on ABC News on Tuesday night. Davis asked Harris about the many policy positions she has changed since launching her 2024 presidential campaign, but the vice president used her two minutes to discuss her âvaluesâ instead of explaining her shifting stances.
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âVice President Harris, in your last run for president, you said you wanted to banfracking. Now you donât. You wanted mandatorygovernment buyback programs for assault weapons. Nowyour campaign says you donât,â Davis said. âYou supported decriminalizing border crossings, now youâre takinga harder line. I know you saythat your values have not changed. Sothen, why have so many of yourpolicy positions changed?âÂ
Harris emphasized her âvalues have not changedâ and asserted she would address âat least every pointâ Davis recounted, but told the moderator she would focus on fracking because of the debate taking place in Pennsylvania.
âI made that very clear in 2020. I will not ban fracking. I have not banned fracking as vice president of the United States. And in fact, I was the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened new leases for fracking,â she said. âMy position is that we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy, so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil. We have had the largest increase in domestic oil production in history because of an approach that recognizes that we can not over-rely on foreign oil.â
The vice president then discussed her âmiddle classâ background to explain her âvalues.â
ââThe values I bring to the importance of home ownershipâ, knowing not everybody got handed four hundred million dollars on a silver platter and then filed bankruptcy six times is a value that I bring to my work, to say we are going to work with the private sector and home builders to increase three million homes, increase by three million homes by the end of my first term,â Harris said.
âMy work that is related to having a friend when I was in high school, who was sexually assaulted by her stepfather. And my focus then on protecting women and children from violent crime is based on a value that is deeply grounded in the importance of standing up for those who are most vulnerable,â she continued. âMy work, that is about protecting Social Security and Medicare, is based on long standing work that I have done protecting seniors from scams.
CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten said on Tuesday that there is more room for movement for Harris than Trump after the debate, citing polling numbers that showed Americans still want to learn more about the vice president. The data reporter suggested undecided voters could watch the debate to develop their views of the vice president while they have already drawn their conclusions regarding the former president.
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