On Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris will sit down alongside her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, for her first major interview since being installed as the Democratic nominee for president. CNN’s Dana Bash will conduct the interview.
Presumably, this will be an opportunity for Harris to address a long list of major policy flip-flops.
In 2017, when she was a U.S. senator from California, Harris decried “Trump’s border wall” as “a stupid use of money” and promised to block any funding for it.
Today, she is pledging to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a wall if elected president.
In 2019, when she was a presidential candidate in the Democratic primary, she said during a CNN climate town hall: “There’s no question, I’m in favor of banning fracking.”
Now her campaign pledges she will not ban fracking.
In 2020, Harris made it clear she supports defunding the police. Her campaign has since walked that back, saying she supports funding the police and being “tough” on crime.
Despite Harris being one of the first co-sponsors of the job-killing “Green New Deal,” which imposes government mandates to eliminate oil and gas completely, and despite her past support for banning gas-powered cars, her campaign now claims she does not support an electric vehicle mandate.
On the economy, Harris pledges to cut taxes and let Americans “keep more of their hard-earned money.”
Yet her plan so far includes raising taxes on small businesses, taxing unrealized gains, a second death tax that will adversely impact farmers and a host of new taxes on oil and gas companies, guaranteeing continued high gas prices and soaring inflation.
And don’t overlook her record as the sitting vice president who has fully supported President Joe Biden’s tax increases for the last four years. See: Her decision-making votes on both the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and the $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act.
Harris is better known for her incoherent word salads than her ability to clearly articulate policy proposals, but let’s give her the benefit of the doubt and presume she will adequately address each of these flip-flops.
Will it matter?
The press has a fundamental responsibility to nail down candidates on their positions so voters can make an informed decision before heading to the ballot box. In this regard, Thursday’s interview matters very much. So far, the press has abandoned this responsibility when it comes to Harris. CNN has an opportunity to take the first step in reestablishing the integrity and professionalism of American media.
While it is the press’ job to demand clear answers, it is ultimately up to voters to evaluate Harris and her positions, as well as her trustworthiness. Voters must not only make a decision on whether they agree with her on her plans for the economy, energy, and immigration; they must also decide if Harris was being honest then (when she was a senator, a presidential candidate in 2019, and over the last four years as vice president) or if she is being honest now, as a political candidate for president.
Considering the manner in which she was installed as the Democrat nominee, in addition to her long list of flip-flops, her validity is questionable, and whatever she says now should be taken with a grain (or a mountain) of salt.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said it best when he suspended his campaign earlier this week: The Democrats ran a sham primary and installed the least popular candidate from 2020, whose campaign was unable to gain any traction and she was forced to drop out before the Iowa primary.
With this in mind, it is clear Harris is nothing more than a vapid vessel to continue implementing the Democrats’ far-left agenda that ultimately seeks to erode our most fundamental freedoms through increased government control, mandates and censorship. (Will Harris be pressed on her role in pressuring Facebook to censor content during the COVID-19 pandemic?)
Expect Harris and Walz to put on a good show and tell America she is an honest candidate who seeks “A New Way Forward” to improve the lives of Americans through a moderate agenda.
But does it matter?
No.
Because the Democrats’ plan has been clear from the day they kicked President Joe Biden off the proverbial cliff: Say and do whatever (and nominate whomever) is necessary to win the election and remain in power.
Harris and Walz are simply pawns in a much larger and much more dangerous game.
Carly Atchison Bird is the former national spokeswoman for the Ron DeSantis presidential campaign. She is the founder and president of Bird’s Eye Consulting and lives in Virginia Beach.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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