Here are some takeaways from the Democratic ticket’s interview with CNN’s Dana Bash:
Flip-flop on fracking: In 2019, Kamala Harris opposed fracking — a position that could have proven politically damaging in Pennsylvania, where it’s a huge employer. Now, she says, she supports it.
Progressives have opposed fracking due to concerns about climate change. But under the Inflation Reduction Act, a bill that Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to pass in the Senate and President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022, fracking has expanded.
Harris said she had already changed her position on fracking in 2020, when she said that Biden “will not end fracking.”
Appointing a Republican to the Cabinet: Asked if she would appoint a Republican to her Cabinet, Harris said: “Yes, I would.”
“No one in particular,” she said. “We have 68 days to go in this election, so I’m not putting the cart before the horse. But I would.”
Refusing to engage in identity politics: Last month, Donald Trump questioned Harris’ racial identity, suggesting she’d previously identified as South Asian but “happened to turn Black” for political purposes.
Shaking her head, Harris said Trump’s remark is part of his “same old tired playbook.”
“Next question, please,” she said.
Her refusal to comment further aligns with her campaign’s strategy to avoid leaning into identity politics following Trump’s remarks. It could also indicate how Harris might handle challenges to her race and gender during her first debate with Trump next month.
Biden’s call: Harris said she was having breakfast with her family on July 21 when the phone rang.
“It was Joe Biden, and he told me what he had decided to do,” Harris said, in her most extensive remarks yet on how she learned the president was ending his reelection bid and endorsing her to replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket.
“I asked him, ‘Are you sure?’ and he said: ‘Yes,’” Harris recalled. “My first thought was not about me, to be honest with you. My first thought was about him.”
Blaming Trump on border security: Trump has made attacking the Biden administration’s handling of the US-Mexico border a signature issue, but Harris said Trump bears much of the blame for the border security problems he bemoans.
She pointed to his opposition to the bipartisan border security bill hashed out by a group of lawmakers. Asked if she would push that bill if she is elected president, Harris said: “I would make sure that it would come to my desk and I would sign it.”
She also said she does not support decriminalizing illegally crossing the border into the United States, reversing another position she took in 2019.
Walz says he owns his mistakes: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, was pressed on false claims he’s made, including in a 2018 video in which he refers to “weapons of war, that I carried in war.”
Though Walz served 24 years in the Army National Guard, he was never in a combat zone. He said he misspoke.
“My wife, the English teacher, told me my grammar’s not always correct,” he said.
Walz had also said in his convention speech that he and his wife used IVF to conceive their children but has since clarified it was a different kind of fertility treatment.
“I certainly own my mistakes when I make them,” he said.