Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) highlighted on ABC News Sunday that Vice President Kamala Harris has not yet distanced herself from the far-left views she once held.
Concerns about Harris’ campaign have emerged since she became the Democratic presidential nominee, particularly due to her lack of an official policy platform and her decision not to engage in in-depth media interviews. During his appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” Cotton challenged host Jonathan Karl’s assertion that Harris has shifted away from the progressive policies she supported during her 2020 presidential run.
“This is not a radical convention. She — as you heard me go through with Bernie Sanders, she is not taking the positions of the far left of her party. She’s clearly making an effort to move to the middle,” Karl said.
ABC's Jon Karl has proven during interviews with Sen. JD Vance and Sen. Tom Cotton that he is either totally uninformed about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz's polices or that he is willing to spin and lie on their behalf.
REMINDER: Kamala Harris wants to decriminalize illegal… pic.twitter.com/A6kvnVSL8h
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) August 25, 2024
“I did hear what you said to Senator Sanders, and I thought it was clear that he was very disappointed that she’s taking these efforts not to change her positions, but to hide her positions, Jon. The American people are totally justified to conclude that Kamala Harris is a dangerous San Francisco liberal based on what she campaigned on the last time she ran for president and what this administration has done the last four years,” Cotton said.
Cotton went on to say that Harris distanced herself from the Biden administration during last week’s Democratic National Convention. He also criticized some of her 2020 campaign promises, including her stance on “decriminalizing illegal immigration.”
“Again, you would have thought watching the Democratic convention last week that the Democrats are not in office, that they’re not in power, that they’re campaigning against an incumbent Republican. When in reality, she’s been part of the failures of the Biden-Harris Administration for four years, and she campaigned for president, in her own right, she did, in fact, promise things like decriminalizing illegal immigration —”
Karl countered by arguing that Harris had “clearly changed” her position and acknowledged the change herself. However, Cotton pushed back, pointing out that it has only been her aides who have publicly distanced Harris from her previous campaign policies.
“No, no she has not. Jon, she has not said that. You pointed out to Senator Sanders repeatedly — things that her campaign has said. Anonymous aides speaking on background reporters have said, ‘Well, she no longer believes these things.’ Okay, maybe she has changed her position on health insurance and confiscating your gun. If she has changed her position, she owes it to the American people to come out and say in her own words when she changed and why she changed,” Cotton said. “That’s one reason why she needs to address the American people and speak to these questions because the only basis they have to conclude what she will be like as president is what she’s done for four years in this administration and what she said in her own voice in the last campaign. Remember, these are not, like, college essays, Jon. This is what she said when she was campaigning for president as a 54-year-old woman. If she’s had such a radical change of heart in the last five years, she owes the American people answers.”
Republicans have consistently criticized Vice President Kamala Harris for reversing her policy positions, highlighting her past support for various progressive measures such as a ban on fracking, mandatory federal gun buybacks, and the abolition of private health insurance. Since Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, her campaign and supporters have defended her, even though she has not personally addressed these issues in media interviews.
In late July, Mitch Landrieu, Harris’ national campaign co-chair, faced questions during a CNN interview about her stance on defunding the police, which remains unclear. Landrieu stated that Harris’ “actions indicate that she wants to fund the police, but she wants to do the other things as well because both of them together will create safety on the streets of America.”
