Two weeks before the election, with early voting already ongoing in a majority of U.S. states, Vice President Kamala Harris is making her way through interviews, explaining her positions and taking tough questions on her validity as a candidate, abortion rights, the Supreme Court and the preservation of democracy.
We have listened and read through five of these tough interviews—Alex Cooper’s podcast Call Her Daddy; Charlamagne Tha God’s The Breakfast Club podcast; the Univision Town Hall; a Fox News interview with Bret Baier; and Howard Stern’s Howard Stern Show—so you don’t have to.
Here are some of the toughest questions she faced, and her frank answers, in her own words.
The questions and answers below have been lightly edited for clarity.
Alex Cooper, host of podcast Call Her Daddy:
Cooper: In the debate, former President Trump claimed that some states are executing babies after birth. Can you just clarify?
Harris: That is not happening anywhere in the United States. It is not happening, and it’s a lie. It’s a bold-face lie that he is suggesting that. … Can you imagine? He is suggesting that women in their ninth month of pregnancy are electing to have an abortion? Are you kidding? That is so outrageously inaccurate, and it’s so insulting to suggest that that would be happening and that women would be doing that. It’s not happening anywhere. This guy is full of lies. I mean, I just have to be very candid with you.
In my career, from the time I got out of law school through most of my career as a prosecutor, I understood that the words that I spoke and what I did with those words would be the difference between whether somebody was charged with a crime or went to prison, maybe prison for life. When I was attorney general, I was the top law enforcement officer of the biggest state in this country. And I was acutely aware that the words I spoke could be the difference between whether a corporation was in business or out of business, that the words I spoke could move markets.
The idea that someone is not only so careless and irresponsible and reckless, but out and out lies to create fear and division in our country, and thinks he should be president of the United States, standing behind the seal of the president of the United States using the microphone that comes with that, and using that voice and those words in such an irresponsible—and that’s mild—way. And this is why this election matters.
Cooper: As women, we have to work 10 times harder. We got to be smarter. We got to play the game to even get our foot in the door sometimes. Can you tell the Daddy Gang, when people tell you no, when people look at you and doubt you, what does that ignite in you?
Harris: I’ve been told that many times. And through the course of my career, I’ve been told, at one point, you’re too young. I’ve been told, ‘oh, nobody like you has ever done that before. Oh, they’re not ready for you.’ Oh, and this is the one that kills me: ‘Oh, it’s going to be a lot of hard work.’ As though we don’t like hard work.
Here’s my response: I don’t hear no. I don’t hear no. And I urge all the Daddy Gang, don’t hear no. Just don’t hear it.
Cooper: Throughout this election, your identity has been called into question many times. Your opponent has called you crazy, weak, fake and dumb. How does that affect you?
Harris: I think it’s really important not to let other people define you. And usually, those people who will attempt to do it don’t know you.
Cooper: I saw the governor of Arkansas said, ‘My kids keep me humble. Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.’ How did that make you feel?
Harris: I don’t think she understands that there are a whole lot of women out here who, one, are not aspiring to be humble. Two, a whole lot of women out here who have a lot of love in their lives, family in their life and children in their life. And I think it’s really important for women to lift each other up.
I’ll tell you, Alex, one of the things that I have really enjoyed about where the discussion has gone, one of the places it’s gone—we have our family by blood, and then we have our family by love. And I have both. And I consider it to be a real blessing. I have two beautiful children, Cole and Ella, who call me Mamala. We have a very modern family. My husband’s ex-wife is a friend of mine.
Also, I’ll tell you, look, I’m a child of divorced parents. And when I started dating Doug, my husband, I was very thoughtful and sensitive to making sure that until I knew that our relationship was something that was going to be real, I didn’t want to form a relationship with the kids and then walk away from that relationship. My own experience tells me that children form attachment and you really want to be thoughtful about it. And so I waited to meet the kids, and they are my children. And I love those kids to death.
Family comes in many forms. And I think that increasingly, all of us understand that this is not the 1950s anymore. Families come in all kinds of shapes and forms, and they’re family nonetheless.
I don’t think she understands that there are a whole lot of women out here who … are not aspiring to be humble.
Vice President Kamala Harris
Cooper: People are so frustrated and just exhausted with politics in general. They don’t feel incentivized to vote because they feel like politicians are essentially over-promising, under-delivering. Why should we trust you?
Harris: So I’ll say this. Look, you can look at my career to know what I care about. I care about making sure that people are entitled to and receive the freedoms that they are due. I care about lifting people up and making sure that you are protected from harm. I care about tapping into the ambitions and the aspirations of people, knowing that we are capable of so much, but you can’t grow the strength of our country if you underestimate the capacity of each person, right?
Which is why another thing that I’m really focused on is small businesses and startups, and giving startups a $50,000 tax deduction, because right now it’s $5,000, and you can’t start up anything, any small business with $5,000. But the bottom line is this. I believe in the promise of America. I have not been able to be the first in every position that I’ve had, were it not for the promise of America. I believe in our country. I love our country. And I believe that leadership has to be about knowing our capacity and then investing in the people. Because lifting up each person that we do is about lifting up the whole.
I’m really focused on … small businesses and startups, and giving startups a $50,000 tax deduction, because right now it’s $5,000, and you can’t start up anything, any small business with $5,000.
Harris
Charlamagne Tha God, host of the The Breakfast Club podcast:
Charlamagne Tha God: Folks say that you come off as very scripted. They say you like to stick to your talking points.
Harris: That would be called disciplined.
Charlamagne Tha God: Ooh, okay, okay. Some people say you have an inability to fearlessly say who you are and what you believe. I know that’s not true—but what do you say to that criticism? And is it fair for SNL to make fun of it?
Harris: Hasn’t Maya Rudolph been wonderful? I have nothing but admiration for the comedy, and I think it’s important to be able to laugh at yourself and each other in the spirit of obviously comedy, and not belittling people as my opponent would do.
Charlamagne Tha God: But what do you say to people who say you stay on the talking points?
Harris: I would say, you’re welcome.
I mean, listen, here’s the thing. I love having conversations, which is why I’m so happy to be with you this afternoon. And the reality is that there are certain things that must be repeated to ensure that I have everyone know what I stand for and the issues that I think are at stake in this election, and so it requires repetition.
Some people say that until someone has heard the same thing at least three times, it just doesn’t stay with you. So repetition is important. And for that reason—yes, at my rallies, I say the same thing when I go to Detroit, as I do in Philly, as I do wherever I am. To make sure that people hear and receive what I think are some of the most critical issues that are at stake in this election.
As vice president, [I] have been a champion for bringing marijuana down on the schedule … instead of it being ranked up there with heroin.
Harris
Charlamagne Tha God: One of the biggest allegations against you is that you targeted and locked up thousands of Black men in San Francisco for weed. Some say you did it to boost your career, some say you did it out of pure hate for Black men. Please tell us the facts. What’s the facts of that situation?
Harris: It’s just simply not true. And what public defenders who were around those days will tell you [is] I was the most progressive prosecutor in California on marijuana cases and would not send people to jail for simple possession of weed, and, as vice president, have been a champion for bringing marijuana down on the schedule, so instead of it being ranked up there with heroin, we bring it down.
My pledge is, as president, I will work on decriminalizing it because I know exactly how those laws have been used to disproportionately impact certain populations and specifically Black men.
Charlamagne Tha God: You know, you said we can do it all—but can we? Tupac famously said, “We got money for war, but can’t feed the poor.” And I saw President Obama say last week that you really shouldn’t expect a president to rid the world of all of its problems. So is it fair to tell people, hey, we can do it all? Because that’s when people get disappointed, when things don’t happen.
Harris: But I think President Obama is absolutely correct. But it doesn’t mean we can’t do anything, that’s right. So when I talk about extending the child tax credit, as when I was vice president, I pushed that we would do it during our first year, and we reduced Black child poverty in America by 50 percent. We did that. We can do that.
My plan is about building up home ownership in the Black community—we can do that.
My work has been about increasing access to capital, bringing billions more dollars into our community banks, which I’ve done as vice president through cooperation and partnership with some of the big banks and tech companies to get more access to capital for our entrepreneurs, for our businesses. We’ve done that.
So we should never sit back and say, ‘Okay, I’m not going to vote because everything hasn’t been solved.’ I share a desire that everything should be solved, by the way, I think it is what we should all want, but that shouldn’t stand in the way of us also knowing we can participate in a process that’s about improving things.
There are certain things that must be repeated to ensure that I have everyone know what I stand for and the issues that I think are at stake in this election, and so it requires repetition.
Harris
Audience guests at the Univision Town Hall with Enrique Acevedo:
Univision Town Hall guest Yvette Castillo: I’m an American citizen, born to two Mexican parents. They were here before I was even born. They have worked their whole lives. But with the way immigration laws change over time, I was only able to help my dad get his legal status squared away but not my mom’s. My mom passed away just six weeks ago. And she was never, ever able to get the type of care and service that she needed or deserved.
What are your plans, or do you have plans to support that subgroup of immigrants who have been here their whole lives or most of them and have to live and die in the shadows?
Harris: Your parents were here for years, it sounds like. And your father was able to earn his pathway to citizenship, but your mother was not. And I’m going to assume it’s because part of the problem is that we do have a broken immigration system, including it being the case that even though, when we were elected in 2020, and the first bill we offered Congress—before we did the bipartisan infrastructure bill, before we did the work on gun safety, before we did the work on investing in chips and science—the first bill we offered within hours of taking the oath was a bill to fix the immigration system, including creating a comprehensive earned pathway to citizenship for hardworking people. And it was not taken up. And now we look at a situation where people are suffering.
The reality is that, in terms of having access to healthcare, had your mother been able to gain citizenship, she would have been entitled to healthcare that may have alleviated her suffering and yours. And this is one example of the fact that there are real people who are suffering because of an inability to put solutions in front of politics.
I mean, an example of this on immigration policy is that, as it relates to what we need to do to strengthen our border, a bipartisan group of members of Congress, including one of the most conservative members of the United States Senate, came together with one of the strongest border security bills we’ve had in decades. And it included 1,500 more border agents to go to the border to help those hardworking folks who are working around the clock. […] And Donald Trump found out about that bill, realized it would be a solution, and told them not to put it on the floor for a vote, because he would prefer to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.
There are real people who are suffering because of an inability to put solutions in front of politics.
Harris
Univision Town Hall guest Mario Sigbaum: You became a candidate without going through the primary sort of caucus, like it usually happens. I’m right now leaning towards Trump, but I haven’t made a decision. I’m also concerned about the way I feel President Biden was pushed aside. I think it’s extraordinary circumstances, given how close we are to the election.
How do you respond to this process and how you got the candidacy?
Harris: First of all, thank you for being so candid and allowing me to answer the question. Thank you.
President Biden made a decision that I think history will show was probably one of the most courageous that a president could make, which is he decided to put the country above his personal interest. And he made that decision. Within that same period of time, supported my candidacy and urged me to run.
He and I have been partners for the last four years as his vice president, and I am honored to have earned the Democratic nomination. I am honored to have the endorsement of people from every walk of life. You will probably find that I probably have a bigger coalition of people who couldn’t seem to be more different than each other, who have come together around my candidacy—from 200 Republicans who worked with and for President Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney; including Liz Cheney, the former congresswoman, and her father, the former vice president, Dick Cheney, who is supporting me; former members—very esteemed members, including generals, of the national security community. I have the endorsement and support of Alberto Gonzales, most recently, who, of course, was attorney general.
I have the support of people from every background, and I believe this is the reason why: It is incredibly important—and I know you and I can see you are a patriot—that we have the president of the United States who honors the oath that they take to support the Constitution of the United States. There is a huge contrast in this election. Donald Trump has said he will be a dictator on day one. Many people come from backgrounds and countries of origin, and we know what that means when you’re talking about someone who wants to be president of the United States and wants to be a dictator and what that means in terms of taking freedoms from their people.
It is incredibly important … that we have the president of the United States who honors the oath that they take to support the Constitution of the United States.
Harris
Fox News with Bret Baier
Baier: Are you still in support of using taxpayer dollars to help prison inmates or detained illegal aliens to transition to another gender?
Kamala Harris: I will follow the law, and it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed. You’re probably familiar with now it’s a public report that under Donald Trump’s administration, these surgeries were available to, on a medical necessity basis, to people in the federal prison system. And I think frankly, that ad from the Trump campaign is a little bit of like throwing stones when you’re living in a glass house.
Baier: We’ve heard a lot about those plans in recent days. Your campaign slogan is “a new way forward” and “it’s time to turn the page.” You’ve been vice president for three and a half years, so what are you turning the page from?
Harris: Well, first of all, turning the page from the last decade in which we have been burdened with the kind of rhetoric coming from Donald Trump that has been designed and implemented to divide our country and have Americans literally point fingers at each other. Rhetoric and an approach to leadership that suggests that the strength of a leader is based on who you beat down instead of what we all know, the strength of leadership is based on who you lift up.
Baier: If that’s the case, why is half the country supporting him? Why is he beating you in a lot of swing states? Why, if he’s as bad as you say, that half of this country is now supporting this person who could be the 47th president of the United States? Why is that happening?
Harris: This is an election for president of the United States. It’s not supposed to be easy.
Baier: So are they misguided, the 50 percent?
Harris: Listen, let—
Baier: Are they stupid? What is it?
Harris: Oh, God. I would never say that about the American people. And in fact, if you listen to Donald Trump, if you watch any of his rallies, he’s the one who tends to demean and belittle and diminish the American people. He’s the one who talks about an enemy within, an enemy within, talking about the American people, suggesting he would turn the American military on the American people.
Howard Stern, host of The Howard Stern Show:
Stern: I mean, it just says so much. [Donald Trump] didn’t want to be fact checked. This is maddening. This is insanity. What do you mean you don’t want to be fact checked?
Harris: Howard, people ask me, like, what do you think is going on? And what, what is the tension here? What’s at stake? And there are many things, and I can be much more articulate than what I’m going to say. But ultimately I do believe that this is an election that is about strength versus weakness, and weakness as projected by someone who puts himself in front of the American people and does not have the strength to stand in defense of their needs, their dreams, their desires, the work that must happen to make sure that we are a secure nation. That we are nurturing and protecting our alliances around the world, that we are supporting America’s military, that we are fighting to bring the cost of living down for working families, that we are building businesses, building growth.
Stern: John McCain— [Donald Trump] doesn’t like him because he got captured.
Harris: He says he doesn’t like him because I don’t like people who got caught. A prisoner of war, an American hero.
Think about this guy who, by the way, his former chief of staff, two secretaries of defense, his national security advisor, people who served with Donald Trump in the White House, have said he is unfit to be commander in chief and is dangerous. So the people who know him best have let us know. They’ve seen him. They’ve worked with him in the Oval Office, and they know he is dangerous and unfit to be president of the United States.
For the first time, we’re seeing a restriction of rights—fundamental rights, including what could be more fundamental than to make decisions about your own body.
Harris
Stern: Does it infuriate you? Something that drives me nuts with Obama’s presidency, he had the opportunity to appoint someone to the Supreme Court. … The basic unfairness of that makes me insane. It makes me feel like America’s going down the tubes. How can this be? The president could not appoint a Supreme Court justice. … You know what you want? You want to get an abortion? You don’t want to get abortion. I trust any woman to make that decision for herself. What is this? I don’t want Donald Trump and his party deciding. I don’t want Clarence Thomas deciding.
Harris: But here’s the thing that is, again, really important that people understand about who Donald Trump is. He hand selected three members of the United States Supreme Court to do exactly what they did: Take away the right of an individual to make decisions about their own body.
Like, I ask people to take a step back. Let’s—let’s just think about it this way. Let’s—whatever your gender. And it’s not about abortion. You have basically now a system that says you as an individual do not have the right to make a decision about your own body. The government has the right to make that decision for you. So regardless of how you feel about abortion, think about what that means.
You know, the strength of America includes that we have been committed as Americans. It’s part of our spirit to the expansion of rights. For the first time, we’re seeing a restriction of rights—fundamental rights, including what could be more fundamental than to make decisions about your own body. And that’s what has happened.
Stern: What do you think, too, of these judges basically saying whatever Trump does in office is OK, including assassinating his opponents, because he’s doing it for the good of the country. What the hell is going on here? You’re the prosecutor. You’re the attorney general. What is going on here? Is this America?
Harris: So to your point, that’s where everyone, I think, is starting to understand this election is not 2016 or 2020 because that Supreme Court decision just a few months ago basically said to the former president, you will be immune from anything you do in office.
Now, this is a guy who has said he’ll be a dictator on day one. He said he would weaponize the Department of Justice, take away the independence of the Department of Justice and put his loyalist in somebody who said literally he would use this word. He uses this word. He would terminate the Constitution of the United States.
You know what the Constitution of the United States does? That’s the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure. That’s the Fifth Amendment, which is your right to remain silent. That’s the Sixth Amendment, your right to an attorney. And he’s going to terminate the Constitution.
America is so important to the rest of the world. … We are a role model for what it means to be a democracy.
Harris
Stern: You actually had relationships with your teachers? … How did you know to do that? How did you know?
Harris: I love teachers. I really do. They do God’s work. Think about it. We don’t pay them nearly enough. And what is their calling? To teach other people’s children. Right? So when you ask me what was that like? What was the environment like? I think it was all of those incredible teachers who they set an example and they created an environment that was welcoming and nurturing.
I’m very blessed to have been raised, and people I talk to who have achieved any level of success, one of the things that I’ve found to be a theme is that at some point we were each told, be it by a teacher or somebody at your church or your synagogue or a parent. But we were told at some point that we were special. And by the way, we were not particularly special. But somebody told us that and we believed them.
Stern: What is the bias? I mean, what is it, they think a woman’s going to be weak in the White House? I mean, I don’t know how you combat that, honestly. I don’t know what you say to those people.
Harris: Listen, I’ve been the first woman in almost every position I’ve had. … I believe that men and women support women in leadership. And that’s been my life experience. And that’s why I’m running for president.
Stern: So that’s it. That’s the decision. And [Liz Cheney] said, I don’t care about particular issues right now. I need a country that’s free and I need to the United States of America. The lights go out here. It’s going to be a darkness all over the world. NATO—no NATO.
Harris: But to your point, I’ve now met as vice president over 150 world leaders, presidents, prime ministers, chancellors and kings. And part of what keeps me up at night is the knowledge based on experience. America is so important to the rest of the world, Howard. We are so important to the rest of the world. We are a role model for what it means to be a democracy, so we can look at other countries and our allies and our adversaries and say, these are the principles that must be upheld. And while we uphold these principles, we will also be the strongest economy in the world. We will have the most lethal fighting force in the world. All these things coexist.
But you’ve got to have a president who appreciates and understands that on the issue of military. We already discussed where Donald Trump is. He belittles the members of our military.
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