Vice President Kamala Harris would not say definitively where she stands on building a wall across the southern border, and she struggled to give specific answers to questions during CNN’s prime-time town hall Wednesday night.
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper moderated a town hall with Harris and a group of undecided and ostensibly persuadable voters for roughly an hour Wednesday night, when the Democratic presidential nominee faced questions on a range of personal and political issues.
The most fraught exchange between Harris and Cooper took place when Cooper lightly pressed Harris on whether she supports building a wall at the southern border. Cooper noted that border-wall funding was part of the failed bipartisan immigration compromise legislation that Harris frequently talks about on the campaign trail.
“Under Donald Trump you criticized the wall more than 50 times. You called it ‘stupid,’ ‘useless,’ and a ‘medieval vanity project.’ Is a border wall stupid?” Cooper asked.
Taunting Trump, Harris laughed and mocked Trump for failing to build a border wall. Cooper continued to press Harris, and she restated her plan to pass bipartisan immigration legislation, without going into specifics.
“So you don’t think it’s stupid anymore?” Cooper followed up.
“I think what he did and how he did it did not make much sense, because he didn’t do much of anything,” Harris replied, repeating her previous answer.
“But you do want to build some wall?” Cooper continued.
“I want to strengthen our border,” Harris asserted, without answering Cooper’s question.
Another instance of Harris’s failing to answer a question was her reply to a University of Pennsylvania student who asked how she would differ from President Joe Biden and the Biden administration.
“I bring to this role my own ideas and my own experience. I represent a new generation of leadership on a number of issues and believe that we have to actually take new approaches,” Harris said.
Cooper pushed Harris on the issue and on why the Biden administration did not enact the policies she is now running on.
“I’m pointing out things that haven’t been done but need to be done, and I’m not going to shy away from saying, ‘hey, these are still problems that we need to fix,'” Harris responded.
Throughout the town hall, Harris spoke about a number of different issues and repeatedly criticized her opponent, former president Donald Trump, whom she dubbed a “fascist” right at the outset. Notwithstanding her harsh rhetoric about Trump, Harris said she wished to reduce political divisions and hoped to get things done in a bipartisan manner.
When asked about inflation, Harris touted her plan to stop alleged “price-gouging” by corporations and mentioned the need to build more housing, without getting into details.
“That is the first time that we will have a national ban on price-gouging, which is companies taking advantage of the desperation and need of the American consumer and jacking up prices without any consequence or accountability,” Harris said. She did not define “price-gouging” or explain how to enforce her plan.
Many economists have criticized Harris’s proposed “price-gouging” crackdown, and some have likened it to the Nixon administration’s failed price controls during the inflation of the 1970s.
On the subject of abortion, Harris took a different tone and floated the possibility of doing away with the filibuster if Congress in its current makeup cannot codify Roe v. Wade. Abortion is a central campaign issue for Harris, and she often uses the framework of freedom to discuss the subject.
When a town hall attendee raised the issue of Israel, Harris called for the conflict in Gaza to end following the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar — the same position Harris supported before the IDF killed Sinwar. She also called for legislation to strengthen protections for Jewish Americans dealing with the surge of antisemitism on progressive college campuses and beyond.
“It’s unconscionable, and we are now at a place where, with Sinwar’s death, I do believe we have an opportunity to end this war, bring the hostages home, bring relief to the Palestinian people, and work toward a two-state solution,” Harris said.
She similarly struggled to give specifics on what her number one legislative priority would be and what her personal weaknesses are.
“I may not have the answer as soon as you ask it about a specific policy sometimes because I’m gonna want to research it,” Harris said, admitting that she can be a “nerd” on certain subjects.
Toward the end of the night, a Pennsylvania voter asked Harris why she has shifted positions on a number of issues since she her last run for president, four years ago.
“I now have the experience and perspective of having been vice president for almost four years,” Harris told attendees, without explaining how her tenure as vice president has made her change her mind.
The Trump campaign has hammered Harris for the radical positions she took four years ago on issues such as climate, crime, immigration, and transgender procedures for minors and prison inmates including illegal aliens. Polling between the two candidates remains neck-and-neck in all the must-win swing states with less than two weeks until Election Day.
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