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Stephanie Ruhle and Kamala Harris
She emphasized that Donald Trump is no friend to ordinary people and that women don't need his so-called protection. And yes, she did work at a certain fast-food chain.
LGBTQ+ issues didn’t come up in Kamala Harris’s interview with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle Wednesday — Harris’s first solo interview since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee — but much more did. Here are five key takeaways from the one-on-one.
Ruhle asked Harris about Trump’s recent bizarre and condescending comments at a rally in Pennsylvania. “I am your protector. I want to be your protector,” he said. Women will no longer have to think about abortion, he added, because the legality of the procedure is now up to each state, which is where it belongs. He didn’t acknowledge that women are suffering and even dying in states where they can’t obtain an abortion.
“I don’t think the women of America need him to say he’s going to protect them,” Harris said. “The women of America need him to trust them.”
“Donald Trump is also the person who said women should be punished for exercising a decision that they rightly should be able to make about their own body and their future,” she noted. “So I think we would all agree that, as a result of that perspective that he has about women, he also then chose three members of the United States Supreme Court who did as he intended, undid the protections of Roe v. Wade.”
“The facts remain that Donald Trump has a history of taking care of very rich people,” Harris said while discussing her economic plans, which include expanding the child tax credit, financial assistance to first-time home buyers, and raising taxes on corporations and the very wealthy.
“And I’m not mad at anybody for being rich, but they should pay their fair share — but tax cuts for the billionaires and the top corporations in our country, and then not really paying much attention to middle-class families,” which is what Trump did as president, she said. “My perspective on the economy is, when you grow the middle class, America’s economy is stronger.”
“He’s just not very serious about how he thinks about some of these issues,” Harris said in a discussion about his plan to impose tariffs widely. “And one must be serious and have a plan, and a real plan, “that’s not just about some talking point ending in an exclamation at a political rally but actually putting the thought into, what will be the return on the investment, what will be the economic impact on everyday people?”
The cost of Trump’s tariffs on imports would be passed on to consumers, she said, and “would be a 20 percent sales tax, in essence, on basic necessities for the average American worker, average American family, totaling almost $4,000 a year.”
When Ruhle asked about Harris’s most recent gut decision, the nominee responded, “Probably the biggest gut decision I’ve made most recently is to choose my running mate. There were lots of good, incredible candidates, and ultimately that came down to the gut decision.” Walz has proven to be very popular.
“Because your opponent almost every day seems to be talking about this,” Ruhle said. “So I just want to ask you, yes or no, at any point in your life, have you served two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun?”
Harris said yes.
“Part of the reason I even talk about having worked at McDonald’s is because there are people who work at McDonald’s in our country who are trying to raise a family — I worked there as a student, I was a kid — who work there trying to raise families and pay rent on that,” she added. “And I think part of the difference between me and my opponent includes our perspective on the needs of the American people and what our responsibility then is to meet those needs.”
Watch the full interview below, and find a transcript here.
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
