7 takeaways from Kamala Harris's CNN town hall
Vice President Kamala Harris held a town hall on CNN Wednesday in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, where she went after former President Donald Trump and laid out her vision for how she would govern if elected.
Hosted by Anderson Cooper, the town hall, a stand-in event for what would have been the second presidential debate of the 2024 campaign had Trump not declined to participate, featured questions from undecided voters and offered some of the least scripted exchanges of the campaign.
It came with just 13 days remaining until Election Day, and with millions of early votes already cast, in a race that most polls show could go either way.
Here were the key takeaways from the town hall.
Harris says she views Trump as a fascist
As she had on the campaign trail earlier in the day, Harris seized on remarks made by Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly, who recounted to the New York Times Trump’s private praise of Nazi generals and his belief that Germany’s fascist leader Adolf Hitler “did some good things.”
Cooper asked Harris what she would say to voters who still support Trump, despite the testimonials from former members of his administration.
“I do believe that Donald Trump is unstable, increasingly unstable, and unfit to serve,” Harris said, “and I don’t necessarily think that everyone has heard what you and I have heard repeatedly, which is the people who know Donald Trump best, the people who worked with him in the White House, in the Situation Room, in the Oval Office, all Republicans by the way, who served in his administration, his former chief of staff, his national security adviser, former secretaries of defense and his vice president have all called him unfit and dangerous.”
Cooper later followed up by referencing Gen. Mark Milley’s assertion that Trump is “fascist to the core,” and asked Harris if she believed Trump “is a fascist.”
“Yes, I do,” Harris responded.
‘The price of groceries is still too high’
Asked by an independent, undecided voter who was to blame, Biden or Trump, for the spike in inflation, and what she would do to bring grocery prices down, Harris started by acknowledging that “the price of groceries is still too high.”
She then added that it would be her priority to bring prices down and touted her work combating price gouging as California’s attorney general, as well as her new plan to enact a “national ban” to address the practice.
She also promoted her plan to build affordable housing units to bring rent prices down for the average American. “I bring to it my experience, knowing what has been happening in terms of corporations buying up blocks of property to diminish competition and then rents get jacked up,” she said.
Harris then offered her first mild criticism of President Biden, saying, “For too long, frankly, both administrations, both administrations and both parties, Democrats and Republicans, haven’t done enough to deal with the issue of housing. We need a new approach.”
Cooper quoted Harris’s plan on price gouging, noting that it specifically related to times of emergency. “How does that help someone like” the man who asked the question, Cooper asked.
Harris said that price gouging was a real and ongoing issue in states like Georgia and North Carolina, which are trying to recover from Hurricane Helene. “I took this issue on because it affects a lot of people,” she said.
Harris says she supports building more border wall
A registered Republican voter who said he was leaning toward voting for Harris asked her how she would ensure that “every immigrant to the U.S. is integrated into American society safely” and what benefits and subsidies they would be provided with, whether American taxpayers would pay for them and how much would be spent.
“Let’s start with this: America’s immigration system is broken, and it needs to be fixed,” Harris began, before pivoting to her support for a bipartisan border bill scuttled by Trump in early 2024.
Cooper pointed to the record number of border crossings of migrants in 2022 and 2023, which led the Biden administration to issue an executive order in June 2024. “Why didn’t your administration do that in 2022, 2023?” he asked, while acknowledging that the number of migrant crossings had fallen significantly.
“First of all, you’re exactly right, Anderson,” Harris responded, “and as of today, we have cut the flow of immigration by half, in fact the numbers I saw most recently, illegal immigration...”
“But if it was that easy with executive action,” Cooper interrupted, “why not do it in 2022, 2023?”
“Because we were working with Congress and hoping that actually we could have a long-term fix to the problem instead of a short-term fix,” Harris said, adding that “ultimately this problem is going to be fixed through congressional action.”
Another back-and-forth on immigration then followed, with Cooper asking about the part of the bipartisan bill Harris supports that funds further construction of the wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.
“You’re agreeing to a bill that would earmark $650 million to continue building that wall,” Cooper said after noting Harris’s past criticisms of the barrier.
“I pledge that I am going to bring forward that bipartisan bill to further strengthen and secure our border,” Harris said, later adding, “Let’s just fix this thing. Let’s just fix it.”
Ditching the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade
After Harris repeatedly brought up Trump’s appointment of conservative Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, Cooper pressed her on her pledge to codify the decision that guaranteed the right to an abortion nationwide.
“That would obviously require 60 votes in the Senate, a majority in the House. That’s a big leap. We don’t have that yet,” Cooper said, adding, “What do you do?”
“I think we need to take a look at the filibuster, to be honest with you,” Harris replied in reference to a carve-out that would require a simple majority in the Senate to pass national abortion protections.
In an appeal to undecided voters, Harris noted the flood of strict anti-abortion laws that have been passed in the wake of the high court’s decision, some that make no exceptions for cases of rape or incest. She had been campaigning with former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who she said is “unapologetically pro-life and will also tell you that she doesn’t agree with what’s been happening.”
Addresses her own policy changes
A male Republican voter who said he was leaning toward voting for Harris asked her about some of her changing policy positions such as fracking.
“First of all, on fracking, I’ve been very clear. We kind of dispensed with this in 2020. I am not going to ban fracking. I did not as vice president,” she responded, adding, “My value on the issue of what we need to do to invest in a clean energy economy and a clean energy future has not changed, but frankly I now have the experience and perspective of having been vice president for almost four years. I have traveled the country. I know that we can invest in a clean energy economy and still not ban fracking and still do what we need to do to create more jobs.”
Cooper then brought up Harris’s past support for Medicare for All and the view that border crossings should be decriminalized: “Are all of those issues that you’re saying — through consensus and getting stuff done — you have evolved on?”
“Let’s take, for example, the issue of Medicare. My point has always been that access to health care should not just be a privilege of those who can afford it. It should be a right for all people,” Harris responded.
Cooper followed up by asking Harris whether she thought fracking, which releases methane emissions, was bad for the environment.
“I think that we have proven that we can invest in a clean energy economy, we can mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, we can work on sustaining what we need to do to protect this beautiful Earth of ours and not ban fracking,” Harris said.
‘I do pray every day’
Harris showed a personal side of herself at various points during the town hall, like when Cooper asked her about a report that she sought out her pastor after hearing from Biden that he was dropping out of the presidential race.
“Well, my pastor, Rev. Dr. Amos C. Brown, the Third Baptist Church, it was an extraordinary day that Sunday when the president called me. I instinctively understood the gravity of the moment, the seriousness of the moment. I didn’t predict or know how that day would play out,” Harris said, adding, “I just called him. I need that kind of spiritual connection. I needed that advice. I needed a prayer.”
Harris added that she and Brown discussed the “part of the scripture that talks about Esther” and that “it was very comforting for me.”
Cooper asked if she prayed every day.
“I do pray every day,” she said, “sometimes twice a day.”
Palestinian deaths, anti-Semitism and Hitler’s generals
Harris was asked by a female voter what she would do “to ensure [that] not another Palestinian dies due to bombs being funded by U.S. tax dollars.”
“I will say, and I think this is to your point, far too many innocent Palestinian civilians have been killed,” Harris responded. “It’s unconscionable, and we are now at a place where with [Yahya] Sinwar’s death, I do believe we have an opportunity to end this war, bring the hostages home, bring relief to the Palestinian people and work toward a two-state solution where Israel and the Palestinians have equal security and the Palestinian people have dignity, self-determination and the safety that they so rightly deserve.”
Another female undecided voter then asked Harris how she would combat “the growing trend” of anti-Semitism on U.S. college campuses.
“We have seen a rise in anti-Semitism, and it is something that we have to be honest about,” Harris said, noting her work on the subject as attorney general of California. “Part of what we’ve got to do is talk with people so that they understand what are the tropes, what are the roots of what we are seeing so that we can actually have people be more understanding. We need to have laws in place that make those who would commit crimes on behalf of anti-Semitism and hate — that they pay a serious consequence.”
Harris then pivoted back to Trump. “I’m going to tell you what doesn’t help, again I invite you to go online and listen to John Kelly, the former chief of staff of Donald Trump who has told us Donald Trump said essentially, ‘Why aren’t my generals like those of Hitler’s?’”
“Do you believe Donald Trump is anti-Semitic?” Cooper asked Harris.
“I believe Donald Trump is a danger to the well-being and security of America,” she answered.