Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris defended her record as a prosecutor, pledged to decriminalize marijuana and push for police reform as she aimed to shore up support among Black men in an interview with radio host Charlamagne tha God on Tuesday.
Charlamagne, a Black comedian and author who hosts radio program "The Breakfast Club," on WWPR In New York and syndicated nationally by iHeartMedia is known for his blunt interviews of celebrities.
Although he is a Harris supporter, he has been critical of her and President Joe Biden in the past and called Democrats "cowards" for ineffectively prosecuting a case against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, reports Reuters.
In one of his first questions he asked Harris to address a rumor that she disproportionately locked up Black men over her more than a dozen years as San Francisco's district attorney.
"It's just simply not true," Harris said, adding she was described as "one of the most progressive prosecutors" on marijuana cases. She said as president she would work to decriminalize marijuana because she knew how the laws have hurt certain populations, especially Black men.
Her campaign and allies including Barack Obama are working to win them back in Michigan and other battleground states that will be decided by a thin margin.
One of the tensest points of the interview came when Charlamagne pushed Ms. Harris on one of her greatest political vulnerabilities: the U.S.-Mexico border.
She went on the defensive, according to The NY Times.
When Charlamagne asked whether President Biden’s administration should be blamed for the soaring number of illegal crossings recorded during most of his presidency, Ms. Harris repeated her standard argument that the White House had supported a bipartisan border security bill that would have sharply curtailed asylum. Republicans killed the bill after taking a cue from Mr. Trump, who did not want Democrats to secure an election-year victory.
But the exchange also included a rare comment from Ms. Harris about Mr. Trump’s attempts to label her the “border czar.” Mr. Biden did not assign her the job of managing policies at the border, but rather addressing poverty and corruption in Central America so that would-be migrants would stay home.
“If I responded to every name he called me, I wouldn’t be focused on the things that actually helped the American people,” Ms. Harris said of Trump.
Here is the full KAMALA HARRIS CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD BRILLIANT INTERVIEW MUST LISTEN pic.twitter.com/Zk0MYlhTIY
— Dortie (@24SevenEyes) October 15, 2024
When a listener expressed concern that Trump, who is vowing to mass-deport illegal immigrants, might “put anyone that doesn’t look white in camps,” Harris brought up the border.
“Yeah, so you’ve hit on a really important point and expressed it, I think so well, which is he is achieving his intended effect to make you scared,” Harris began, adding: “He prefers to run on a problem instead of fix a problem, and we got to call it out and see it for what it is.”
According to The NY Post, the host interjected: “But doesn’t the Biden administration have to take some blame for the border, though? A lot of the blame — because, I mean, the first three years y’all did get a lot of things wrong with the border.”
Harris pivoted into a lengthy recitation of campaign talking points, saying that “the first thing we dropped was a bill to fix the broken immigration system” — referring to legislation that would have provided a pathway to citizenship for nearly all illegal immigrants in the US, which Republicans said would prompt more to come without legal permission.
Border encounters hit record highs in each of the first three years of Harris’ role leading the federal efforts to reduce illegal immigration, before declining in recent months following a Biden order to restrict the processing of asylum claims.
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