Vice President Kamala Harris for weeks was criticized for avoiding tough questions that came with long-form traditional media interviews.
In an interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” that aired Monday evening, she faced many of them all at once.
Chief among them was whether she regretted the initial border policy during the Biden administration that allowed a historic swell of immigrants across the border.
“Was it a mistake to loosen the immigration policies as much as you did?” “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker asked.
“It’s a long-standing problem, and solutions are at hand, and from day one, literally, we have been offering solutions,” Harris said, pointing to an early attempt to advocate for an immigration bill in Congress.
Whitaker, who noted that the border security issue had been ongoing for decades, tried twice more to pin Harris down. She did not concede a policy error on her part or on the part of President Joe Biden, pointing to efforts by the administration from the day it took over from Donald Trump to work with Congress and win a comprehensive immigration solution. Harris also pointed to changes the administration has more recently made that significantly curbed encounters at the southern border.
“Because of what we have done, we have cut the flow of illegal immigration by half, but we need Congress to be able to act to actually fix the problem,” she said.
It was just one of the searing questions that Whitaker formulated as he peppered Harris and, for a shorter time, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in advance of the November election. Harris and Walz have been cautious in their approach to sitting with traditional media, a strategy that has worried some Democrats that it could hurt them in the end. With 29 days until the election, the Harris campaign announced a media “blitz” that includes late-night show appearances.
Before the interview, the program noted that it was a decadeslong practice to air interviews of both presidential candidates in a special. But Trump, after having initially accepted the invitation and having his campaign coordinate logistics, backed out. (In lieu of a segment on Trump, the program instead aired a feature on the fight in Maricopa County, Arizona, an important location in the election, where Republicans have pushed back against Trump allies’ advocating baseless conspiracies that he did not lose there in 2020.)
That meant it was Harris alone who sat to answer for her past statements, early positions and campaign promises. On many of the questions, she deflected or sidestepped. They included whether she thought Ukraine should be part of NATO.
Harris undergoes a ’60 Minutes’ grilling as Trump sits it out (nbcnews.com)