Vice President Kamala Harris answered questions from voters at a town hall in Aston, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday night as she makes a final pitch to Americans in what is expected to be a razor-thin election.
The town hall, moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, gave her the chance to respond to and capitalize on comments made by John Kelly, the former chief of staff to Donald Trump, who said this week in an interview with The New York Times that his old boss fit the definition of a “fascist.”
The former Marine general also said that Trump had told him multiple times that Adolf Hitler had “done some good things.”
Cooper did not avoid the topic, asking Harris point-blank at the top of the discussion, “Do you think Donald Trump is a fascist?”
“Yes, I do. Yes, I do. And I also believe that the people who know him best on this subject should be trusted,” Harris replied, referencing Kelly.
She also reflected on why the decorated general might have felt the need to bring his concerns to light just two weeks prior to Election Day.
“Why is he telling the American people now?” Harris questioned rhetorically, before answering: “Frankly, I think of it as… he’s just putting out a 911 call to the American people.”
Harris has already been reviving messaging about Trump’s supposed threat to American democracy as part of an argument — frequently heard in her stump speeches — that Trump is unfit for office.
She returned to that pattern by calling Trump “increasingly unhinged and unstable” in her first on-camera reaction to Kelly’s comments on Wednesday afternoon.
“It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans,” she added. “All of this is further evidence for the American people of who Donald Trump really is.”
The vice president warned of the potential for unchecked power if Trump were to win another term in the White House.
“In a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guardrails against his propensities and his actions,” she said. “Those who once tried to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses would no longer be there and no longer be there to rein him in,” Harris said Wednesday afternoon.
The town hall also gave Harris a chance to sway the last sliver of the electorate who may have questions about her ability to handle the job of the presidency — especially because Pennsylvania is a key battleground state.
That included responding to questions about how her presidency would be different from President Joe Biden’s, to which she answered, “My administration will not be a continuation of the Biden administration. I bring to this role my own ideas and my own experience. I represent a new generation of leadership on a number of issues and believe we have to actually take new approaches.”
She cited her past work on the foreclosure crisis and her plans to protect homeowners from predatory lending.
Later in the town hall, Harris outright called Trump a “fascist” while answering a question on Palestinian civilians being killed in Gaza, which Harris called “unconscionable,” and voters choosing to stay home or protest vote over the war, arguing that many are not single-issue voters.
“Listen, I am not going to deny the strong feelings that people have,” Harris said. “I don’t know that anyone who has seen the images who would not have strong feelings about what has happened, much less those who have relatives, who have died and been killed. And I and I know people and I’ve talked with people, so I appreciate that.”
“But I also do know that for many people who care about this issue, they also care about bringing down the price of groceries,” Harris argued. “They also care about our democracy and not having a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist. They also care about the fact that we need practical, common-sense solutions from a leader who is willing to work across the aisle on behalf of the American people and not themselves. They want a president who cares about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body, understanding that we’re not trying to change anyone’s belief, but let’s not have the government telling women what to do with their body.”
Harris spoke of the need to support small-business owners, calling them “the backbone of the American economy,” and stated that her approach would include tax cuts that would allow small businesses to “invest in themselves, and grow, and in the process invest in communities, invest in neighborhoods, and strengthen our economy overall.”
She discussed bringing to the job her experience of taking care of her sick mother and of raising children, “which is why my plan and my approach says, hey, you shouldn’t have to wipe out all your savings to qualify for Medicaid.”
Cooper also pressed Harris on more specific policies that she has mentioned, including a compromise to set aside $650 million in funding for a wall at the southern border. He asked, “Under Trump, you criticized the border wall more than 50 times. You called it stupid, useless, and a medieval vanity project. Is a border wall stupid?”
Harris answered, “Well let’s talk about Donald Trump and that border wall. Remember he said Mexico would pay for it? Well, they didn’t. How much did he build? I think the last number I saw is about 2%.”
She continued, “I am going to bring forward that bipartisan bill to further strengthen and secure our borders. Yes, I am. And I am going to work across the aisle to pass a comprehensive bill that deals with a broken immigration system.”
Harris explained, “America has always had migration, but there needs to be a legal process for it. People have to earn it. And that’s the point that I think is the most important point that can be made, which is that we need a president who is grounded in common sense and practical outcomes.”
