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Vice President Kamala Harris’ appearance at a CNN town hall with Pennsylvania swing voters on Wednesday disappointed the network’s journalists and pundits, as she left the more than hour-long forum giving verbose and evasive answers to questions from reticent residents.
“From what I’m hearing from people I’m talking to… if her goal was to close the deal, they’re not sure she did it,” CNN anchor Dana Bash said immediately after the event near Philadelphia.
“That said, any time she can be in front of an audience and interact with voters, that’s a victory in terms of how her campaign is going – and they’re very happy about that.”
Vice President Kamala Harris answers questions during a CNN town hall in Pennsylvania, October 23, 2024. REUTERS
Veteran Democratic operative David Axelrod, chief strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, said: “What would concern me is that when she doesn’t want to answer a question, she has a habit of going to Word Salad City.”
“And she did that on several responses,” Axelrod said on a CNN panel following the town hall.
“One was about Israel – Anderson (Cooper) asked a direct question: ‘Would you be stronger against Israel than Trump?’ The answer lasted seven minutes, but none of it related to the question asked.
Axelrod argued that Harris, 60, also “missed an opportunity” when asked about immigration.
“She has not expressed any concerns about any of the administration’s policies. And this is a mistake,” he said. “Sometimes you have to admit things, and she didn’t admit much.”
“She just didn’t want to go there,” CNN anchor Abby Phillip said on a panel after the event, emphasizing that the answers were not related to politics.
CNN moderator Anderson Cooper looks on as Harris answers a question during the town hall. Getty Images
The dismal reviews came after Cooper, who was the town hall’s moderator, aggressively pressed Harris on policy issues — sometimes awkwardly asking her the same question repeatedly when she didn’t give a straight answer.
National Democrats told The Post they are concerned about Harris’ candidacy less than two weeks before Election Day on Nov. 5 — while former President Donald Trump leads in polling averages in all seven major battleground states.
The “right thing” on the border
In one of their most discussed conversations, Harris insisted that she and retiring President Biden had done the “right thing” on U.S.-Mexico border policy.
Harris defended her services as the person responsible for curbing Biden’s illegal immigration, which instead reached record levels in her first three years in the role, as Cooper pressed her to acknowledge that Biden’s June order to limit the release of asylum seekers who illegally entered the United States came too late.
Harris during a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border with U.S. Border Patrol Chief in Tuscon, John Modlin, September 27, 2024. AFP via Getty Images
The exchange began when a student at the Republican Drexel University, who had said he was leaning toward supporting Harris, asked her to describe the “benefits and subsidies” she would offer to new immigrants – a question the veep missed entirely before Cooper took up the line of questioning.
“The American immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed, and it has been broken for a long time,” Harris insisted, invoking familiar campaign talking points, before blaming Trump for helping to crush a bipartisan bill this year that conservatives said made too much little to restrict the release of illegal immigrants who applied for asylum after crossing the border.
“You’re talking about a law that Donald Trump repealed. That was in 2024.” Cooper interjected, providing verification of the time frame. “In 2022 and 2023, record border crossings were recorded.”
“Your administration has taken several hundred executive actions that have not stopped the flow. The numbers kept going up,” Cooper noted.
Former President Donald Trump speaks during a rally at the Findlay Toyota Center in Prescott Valley, Arizona, on October 13, 2024. Getty Images
“Finally in 2024, right in June, three weeks before the first presidential debate with Joe Biden, you take executive actions that had a dramatic impact, really prevented people from crossing the border. Why didn’t your administration do this in 2022, 2023?”
Harris initially pushed back on the decision, saying she and Biden were negotiating with Congress on the immigration reform bill he proposed in January 2021 — even though the provision had not seen any major changes and was widely considered an unassailable messaging bill. acceptance due to the fact that he has called for citizenship to be made available to almost all illegal immigrants already in the US.
“First of all, you’re absolutely right, Anderson, and as of today, we have reduced the flow of immigration by more than half,” Harris said, citing more recent monthly data that reflects a rapid decline in apprehensions after border officials recently recorded an all-time high in December with migrants.
“But if these executive actions made it so easy, why not do it in 2022, 2023?” Cooper pressed on.
Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a CNN town hall in Aston, Pennsylvania, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024. AP
“Because we worked with Congress and we were hopeful that we could actually find a long-term solution to the problem, not a short-term solution,” Harris said.
“Couldn’t you do both at the same time?” – continued the journalist.
“We must understand that ultimately this problem will be solved by action by Congress. Congress has the power and money. I hate to use the terms DC, but they literally write the checks. Part of the problem is actually solving the problem at the border,” Harris said.
Harris defended her role as Biden’s top person in curbing illegal immigration, which has instead reached record levels in her first three years in the role. Getty Images
“We need more judges to hear asylum applications. We need more staff there to handle the processing.
Cooper again bluntly insisted: “Would you regret not following these executive orders in 2022, 2023?”
“I think we did the right thing,” Harris said ultimately.
“And … but the best thing that can happen to the American people is that we are doing bipartisan work, and I promise I will work across the street to solve this long-standing problem,” she added.
The issue of immigration came up multiple times at the forum – at one point, Harris mocked Trump’s efforts to build a US-Mexico border wall during his term and asked, “How much of that wall did he build?” I think the last number I saw was around 2%.
In fact, the Trump administration has built new barriers on about 25% of the nearly 3,000-kilometer southern border, although most of the walls have replaced existing barriers in high-traffic areas.
Harris showed a hint of regret at one point in the more than hour-long dialogue when pressed on her changing position when asked about her support for decriminalizing illegal border crossings while seeking the 2019 Democratic presidential nomination.
“I have never wanted and will never allow America to have a border that is not secure,” Harris said.
‘Fascist’ Trump ‘creates enemy list’
Harris, in her appeal aimed at swaying voters, focused mainly on emphasizing that she is not Trump, whom she claims to consider a fascist.
“Do you think Donald Trump is a fascist?” Cooper asked Harris shortly after the town hall began, citing recent criticism of Trump from his former White House chief of staff John Kelly and former chairman of the joint chief of staff Mark Milley.
Harris arrives for a campaign event near the U.S.-Mexico border on Cochise College’s Douglas campus on Sept. 27, 2024. Rob Schumacher/Republika/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
“Yes I know. Yes, I do,” Harris said.
“In 13 days, you will decide who will sit in the Oval Office on January 20,” the vice president said later in the event.
“You can look at Donald Trump in the White House after January 20, sitting in the Oval Office planning revenge. He talked about his internal enemies… he would sit there – unstable, unbalanced – plotting revenge, plotting revenge, making a list of enemies.
During his campaign to regain power, Trump claimed he would bring “payback,” but at other points he said his revenge would simply be a successful second term.