Kamala Harris served up word salad in a softball one-on-one interview with an ABC affiliate Friday — just days after the network was ripped for failing to fact check her at the debate.
Harris sat for an 11-minute chat with WPVI, a Disney owned-and-operated affiliate station in Philadelphia, after national ABC moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir were accused of bias in her faceoff with Donald Trump on Tuesday.
Anchor Brian Taff asked Harris to describe one or two areas where she’s different from the president in Johnstown Friday.
Instead of offering a policy difference, Harris stated: ‘Well, I’m obviously not Joe Biden’ and ‘I offer a new generation of leadership’, adding that things once taken for granted cannot be overlooked anymore.
She then finally tried to explain her plans to help families raise children and alleviate the cost of child care.
‘For example, another plan that I have that is a new approach is to expand the child tax credit to $6,000 for young families for the first year of their child´s life because that is obviously a very critical stage of development of child, and so my approach is about new ideas, new policies that are directed at the current moment,’ she said.
‘And also, to be very honest with you, my focus is very much on what we need to do over the next 10, 20 years to catch up to the 21st century around, again, capacity but also challenges.’
She also failed to offer a coherent, concrete answer when Taff asked how she was bring prices down.
‘Well, I’ll start with this. I grew up as a middle class kid. My mother raised my sister and me. She worked very hard. We as Americans have beautiful character. We have ambitions and aspirations and dreams. But not everyone necessarily has access to the resources that can help them fuel those dreams and ambitions’.
Harris used a question about the former president’s appeal and how she would speak to his supporters to criticize Trump and his leadership style.
‘I also believe that I am accurate in knowing that most Americans want a leader who brings us together as Americans and not someone who professes to be a leader who is trying to have us point our fingers at each other,’ she said.
The vice president suggested that her support from Republican officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney, is a result of people being ‘exhausted’ with Trump.
‘I think people are more willing now, in light of the hate and division that we see coming out of Donald Trump to say, “Hey, let´s put country first” and I think that just makes us stronger and more healthy as a country,’ she said.
Harris sat for an 11-minute chat with WPVI, a Disney owned-and-operated affiliate station in Philadelphia
She offered a few answers when asked to share one thing she would like people to know about her they don’t yet know.
‘Probably it’s not very different from anybody watching right now,’ she said. ‘I love my family. One of my favorite things that I lately have not been able to do is Sunday family dinner. I love to cook.’
Harris also said her best friend from kindergarten ‘is still my best friend.’
Trump, his running mate Sen. JD Vance and other Republicans have criticized Harris for largely avoiding media interviews or interacting on the record with reporters who cover her campaign events.
She and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, gave a joint interview to CNN last month, which was similarly criticized for failing to give real answers.
Her campaign recently said she will begin to do more local interviews, and the National Association of Black Journalists announced Friday that some of its members will interview Harris on Tuesday in Philadelphia.
It comes after Republicans were furious at ABC News moderators Muir and Davis for refusing to fact check Harris on her lies about Trump’s views on IVF.
The vice president is rumored to have close ties to Disney executive Dana Walden and Harris and Davis are alumna of the same sorority.
Davis says that it was a conscious decision to do the fact checks after seeing how Trump and Joe Biden performed in the CNN debate in June.
‘People were concerned that statements were allowed to just hang and not [be] disputed by the candidate Biden, at the time, or the moderators,’ Davis said.
Davis even anticipated Trump’s comments on abortion and IVF and said it ‘was an obvious thing to get on the record’.
She then admitted that they tried but failed to get the candidates on the record every time they claim they told a lie.
Muir and Davis repeatedly attempted to fact check Trump during the debate on issues such as the Capitol riot and a claim about migrant crime.
However, Harris incorrectly stated that Trump was against in vitro fertilization during the debate.
The former president stated that he has spoken out in favor of IVF when it has faced bans at the state level.
Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer wrote on social media: ‘ABC is making a huge mistake trying to fact check this live. They’re only proving how biased they are. Harris fabricated an attack on Trump over IVF. ABC sat there and said nothing’.
A Trump campaign account pointed out what the debate moderators wouldn’t: that Harris wasn’t telling the truth.
Linsey Davis claimed that Trump was lying when he said that states are allowing for post-birth executions.
Muir said Trump claimed falsely that immigrants were eating pets in the town of Springfield, Ohio.
Harris was not fact checked by either during the debate.
The vice president was apparently satisfied with the result, as the ABC affiliate interview was her first since the CNN chat.
Harris has since challenged Trump to a second debate, which both CBS News and Fox News have offered to moderate.
Trump has insisted that the pair will never debate again.
Walz and Vance will tussle in New York City on October 1, with CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan moderating.