In CNN interview excerpts, Harris defends ideological shift to center

In her first television interview as the Democratic nominee for president, Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday defended her ideological shift to the political center, saying she would appoint a Republican to her Cabinet but promising “my values have not changed.”

She also curtly rejected former President Donald Trump’s baseless claim that she recently “became” Black, according to partial excerpts released by CNN. The full interview will air at 9 p.m. Eastern time on CNN.

Harris, taking questions Thursday afternoon from CNN anchor Dana Bash in Savannah, Georgia, sought to stake out political ground that would appeal to swing voters even as she assured progressive supporters she was still with them.

“The most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is: My values have not changed,” Harris said, adding that her past support for the so-called Green New Deal was reflected in the passage of a sweeping climate bill that President Joe Biden signed in 2022.

Harris told Bash that it was “important to find a common place of understanding of where we can actually solve problems,” according to CNN.

Appointing a nominally bipartisan Cabinet would be a return to tradition after eight years of more partisan White Houses. No Republicans are serving in Biden’s Cabinet. But President Barack Obama had a Republican secretary of transportation and two Republican secretaries of defense. President George W. Bush had a Democratic transportation secretary, and before that, President Bill Clinton had a Republican defense secretary.

Harris declined to name potential Republican picks, but two former representatives, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Liz Cheney of Wyoming, have become implacable foes of Trump. Democrats may feel in their debt if Harris wins in November.

It would be “really important” for her administration to represent “different views, different experiences,” Harris said.

“It would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member who was a Republican,” she said, referring to her Cabinet, according to a video clip released by CNN.

In the interview, Bash pressed Harris on why she had shifted some of her positions from the past. In the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Harris, a former prosecutor then serving in the Senate, ran as a progressive. She now appears to be running a more centrist campaign, though she has yet to outline much of her platform in detail.

Harris, who attended a historically Black university and has long embraced her Black and South Asian identity, also continued an approach of engaging only glancingly with Trump’s incendiary assertion last month that she was “Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person.”

Harris told Bash that Trump had used his “same old tired playbook” by questioning her racial identity, and she promptly added, “Next question, please,” CNN reported.

The interview is a high-stakes moment for Harris, who had spoken with reporters only in brief huddles or in off-the-record settings after Biden ended his reelection campaign on July 21. She was joined by her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, in the interview Thursday.

Republicans have charged that Harris had been hiding from the news media. Trump said Harris had not done interviews because “she can’t do better than Biden,” who has held historically few news conferences during his presidency.

Her supporters have attributed her limited press schedule to the demands of setting up a campaign on the fly. But the lack of unscripted audiences with the news media has prevented reporters from asking Harris about the policy program that she might envision for her presidency.