Harris cracks a beer with Colbert and talks Gaza, Trump and Putin

Vice President Kamala Harris took her message from campaign-speak to conversational during an interview with ate-night host Stephen Colbert on Tuesday night, as she acknowledged fading hopes for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip while keeping up her attacks on former President Donald Trump for his relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia.

As if to underscore her growing confidence -- after a three-day stretch in which Harris appeared in her most extended series of interviews of the campaign -- she joined Colbert in cracking open a can of Miller High Life in front of his CBS studio audience in Manhattan.

"The champagne of beers," Harris joked, after Colbert noted that she had requested that brand of suds -- which is brewed in the battleground state of Wisconsin.

During her taped appearance on The Late Show, Harris also dealt with far weightier subjects. Asked about the war in Gaza, an issue that could threaten her chances of winning states like Michigan, she suggested the conflict was unlikely to end soon, even as she urged optimism.

"We cannot lose some belief in the possibility" of a cease-fire, she said, adding that "the United States must work and not lose hope and not throw up our hands."

And she condemned Trump -- for the second time Tuesday -- over reporting from a new book by journalist Bob Woodward that claimed that Trump had sent rare COVID test machines to Putin in the early days of the pandemic.

"I ask everyone here and everyone who is watching: Do you remember what those days were like?" Harris said, pointing out the number of Americans dying every day. "You remember how many people did not have tests and were trying to scramble to get them?"

The vice president's appearance with Colbert capped a busy day of high-profile interviews, which she had almost entirely avoided during the rollout of her abbreviated campaign.

Earlier Tuesday, she joined The View on ABC for a live appearance, putting forward a new proposal on home health care and accusing Trump of lacking "empathy on a very basic level." Soon after, she gave a lengthy interview to radio host Howard Stern that delved into fresh details of her life and personality.

On Monday, 60 Minutes broadcast a hard-hitting segment featuring her and journalist Bill Whitaker. And on Sunday, she appeared on the popular podcast Call Her Daddy. The wide range of interviewers reflects how the Harris campaign is trying to reach the many voters who get their news online and from nontraditional media with Election Day approaching.

The full interview with Colbert will be broadcast on CBS at 11:35 p.m. The traveling pool of journalists who accompany the vice president provided a transcript of excerpts from Harris' appearance before it aired.

Her time on The Late Show had its lighter moments, too, as when Colbert asked what Harris was thinking during her debate against Trump when she archly put her hand to her chin in a moment that went viral.

"It's family TV, right?" Harris replied. "It starts with a W, there's a letter between it, then the last letter's F."