In a much-anticipated interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Thursday, Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, responded to claims that she should have already put some of her economic ideas into action.
“Your steps sound like they should have been done already. Why are you talking about them now?” Harris has been the vice president of the United States for three and a half years, so Bash asked.
“Well, first we had to get our economy back on track, which we did.” Harris said, “I’m very proud of the work we’ve done to bring inflation down to less than 3% and to keep the cost of insulin for seniors at $35 a month.” “Donald Trump said he would do many things, one of which was let Medicare negotiate drug prices.” It didn’t happen. “We did it.”
In the first part of the interview—her first major back-and-forth with a news outlet since becoming her party’s nominee—Harris said that the U.S. economy had crashed when she and Vice President Joe Biden took office after Trump’s presidency. This was mostly because Trump had not handled the COVID-19 pandemic well.
We wanted to save America more than anything else, and now we know that inflation is less than 3%. “A lot of our policies have helped the United States get back on its feet faster than any other wealthy country,” she said.
As the 2024 candidate for her party, Harris has called for increasing the child tax credit, giving $25,000 to first-time home buyers, and building 3 million homes through a new tax incentive and innovation fund. She also said that she will present a plan for a tax credit for small businesses, including new ones, next week.
Early on, Trump, who is running for president as the Republican nominee this year, said bad things about Harris’s economic policies and the media appearance, which also included Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz.
The former president gave a campaign speech Thursday afternoon in Michigan, a swing state. He said, “Over the past four years, Kamala and crooked Joe Biden have presided over an economic reign of terror, committing one financial atrocity after another.”
Trump also told his fans, “People just want to see if she can get through the interview.” He said this after saying that Harris went with Walz because she didn’t want to talk to a reporter by herself. “As president, you have to deal with the world’s toughest, smartest, and cruelest people.” We got the wrong person if you can’t do an interview.
