Vice President Kamala Harris took questions from a CNN town hall of undecided voters Wednesday night, using the opportunity to heavily criticize former President Donald Trump.
Harris called Trump a “fascist” early in the town hall as she takes an increasingly combative tone in the final days of the presidential race. At other points, she sidestepped questions or failed to get specific as CNN host Anderson Cooper pressed her on everything from the border to tax hikes.
Here are eight takeaways from her town hall on CNN, held in lieu of a second debate with Trump.
Harris calls Trump a ‘fascist’
Harris answered flatly when Cooper asked Wednesday whether she agreed with former White House chief of staff John Kelly that Trump fits the definition of a “fascist.”
“Yes, I do,” Harris said. “I also believe that the people who know him best on this subject should be trusted.”
Harris likened Kelly’s comments, published in the New York Times on Tuesday, to him “putting out a 911 call to the American people.” Kelly had also claimed that Trump made admiring statements about Adolf Hitler.
The Trump campaign has criticized Kelly, a former four-star Marine Corps general, as suffering from “a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
“John Kelly has totally beclowned himself with these debunked stories he has fabricated because he failed to serve his president well while working as chief of staff,” Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung told the Washington Examiner earlier Wednesday.
Harris sidesteps on whether Trump is antisemitic
In response to a voter question about how she would counter antisemitism amid the Israel–Hamas war in Gaza, Cooper interrupted Harris’s answer about Trump’s alleged praise of Hitler to ask whether she considered the former president to be antisemitic.
“I believe Donald Trump is a danger to the well-being and security of America,” she said.
Earlier, in reaction to another voter question about how she would prevent Palestinian casualties in Gaza, Harris expressed hope that the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar will be “an opportunity to end this war, bring the hostages home, bring relief to the Palestinian people, and work toward a two-state solution, where Israel and the Palestinians, in equal measure, have security.”
Harris defends delay in executive action on the border
Harris stood by President Joe Biden’s decision not to take executive action at the border until this June following a historic surge in illegal border crossings. She has previously supported a bipartisan border deal that fell apart in the Senate earlier this year.
“I think we did the right thing,” Harris said. “But the best thing that can happen for the American people is that we have bipartisan work happening, and I pledge to you that I will work across the aisle to fix this long-standing problem.”
When pressed on whether she supported building a southern wall after calling it a “vanity project” in the past, Harris attacked Trump for not finishing the border fencing in his four years in office. Harris did not answer directly when Cooper pressed her on whether she still thinks Trump’s wall is “stupid.”
“I want to strengthen our border,” she said.
Harris pressed on shifting policy positions
Harris described her drastically different policy platform, compared to the more liberal stances she adopted during her 2020 presidential campaign, as rooted in a desire to build consensus.
“Our country deserves to have a president of the United States who is not afraid of good ideas and does not stand on pride, if a perspective needs to be informed by different points of view to build consensus and to have a commonsense approach,” she said. “I’m never going to shy away from good ideas.”
Harris provided the answer in response to a question about fracking, an important issue in the electorally crucial state of Pennsylvania. She no longer supports banning the extraction method, while she has also walked back positions on Medicare for All and decriminalizing illegal border crossings.
“I pledge to you to be a president who not only works for all Americans, but works on getting stuff done,” she said. “That means compromise and it doesn’t mean compromising your values or your principles, but it does mean working to get stuff done.”
Harris dances around tax hikes and Supreme Court reform
When asked for specifics regarding her tax policy, in particular whether those making more than $400,000 should expect a tax increase, Harris did not answer the question directly.
“I’m saying that there is going to be a parity around what the richest people pay in terms of their taxes,” she said. “It is well-documented that some of the richest people in our country have gotten away with a zero tax rate.”
Harris provided a similar response to a question concerning whether she supported expanding the Supreme Court to 12 justices.
“There is no question that the American people increasingly are losing confidence in the Supreme Court, and in large part because of the behavior of certain members of that court,” she said. “I do believe that there should be some kind of reform of the court, and we can study what that actually looks like.”
Harris says more ‘needs to happen’ after Biden term
Harris reiterated that her administration would not be a “continuation” of Biden’s after failing to answer a similar question on how she would govern differently on The View earlier this month.
But she struggled to respond to a separate question asking her to suggest “one major policy” she would aim to accomplish through “congressional action.”
“There’s not just one. I have to be honest with you,” she said. “There’s a lot of work that needs to happen, but I think that maybe part of this point that I, how I think about it, is we’ve got to get past this era of politics and partisan policy.”
When pushed on why she has not implemented more of the plans she is proposing now in her time as vice president, she conceded that she and Biden have not fully addressed problems like inflation.
“There was a lot that was done, but there’s more to do,” she said. “I’m not going to shy away from saying, ‘Hey, these are still problems that we need to fix.’”
Harris says she’s too ‘nerdy’ as weakness
Harris said her greatest strength and weakness is surrounding herself with “very smart people around me who bring to my decision-making process different perspectives.”
“I may not be quick to have the answer as soon as you ask it about a specific policy issue,” the vice president said. “Sometimes, because I’m going to want to research it, I’m going to want to study it.”
She added: “I’m kind of a nerd sometimes, I confess, and some might call that a weakness, especially if you’re in an interview or just kind of being asked a certain question and just expected to have the right answer right away. But that’s how I, that’s how I work.”
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Harris says she prays ‘every day’
Reflecting on the phone call she had with her reverend, Dr. Amos C. Brown of Third Baptist Church in San Francisco, after Biden told her this summer that he was no longer seeking the presidency, Harris revealed that she prays “every day.”
“I do pray every day, sometimes twice a day,” she said. “I was raised to believe in a loving God, to believe that your faith is a verb. You know, you live your faith.”
