Vice President Kamala Harris was taken to task by CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale over her recent claim that she thought voters knew where she stood on fracking during the 2020 presidential election.
Harris told CNN’s Dana Bash last month, “No, and I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020 that I would not ban fracking. As vice president. I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking.”
But Dale debunked that claim from Harris. During CNN’s post-interview coverage, he said the “fact-check bottom line…is that she did not in fact state at a 2020 debate that she changed her prior support for a fracking ban.”
As an example Dale produced a clip from 2019 in which Harris said, “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.”
“Joe Biden will not end fracking. He has made that abundantly clear,” she continues to say on the matter.
But Dale wasn’t the only journalist taking a closer look at what Harris said in recent days. NBC News correspondent Yamiche Alcindor also questioned Harris’s response to why her policy decisions had shifted, writing that “Harris is saying ‘my values haven’t changed’ but offering no explanation for how and why she has flip-flopped on so many issues.”
The Democratic nominee for Vice President has also been criticized lately — accused of not talking to the press with just about 40 days since hitting the campaign trail.
And her decision to be interviewed not alone, but alongside her running mate — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — has only fueled further scrutiny over a choice she pinned on trying something new: “I wanted my lieutenant governor with me in an interview for the first time.”
