In her first interview as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris seemed to make headlines for all the wrong reasons. During a conversation with CNN’s Dana Bash, Harris put the truth at the back seat and blatantly misrepresented her past stance on fracking.
Asked, straight-up, if she is for banning fracking-a position she said she definitively supported in 2019, she changed her tune, saying, “There is no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.”
Pressed on it by Bash, Harris flatly denied her previous support: “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.”
The problem with Harris’s claim? It’s simply not true. Harris didn’t even make it onto the 2020 debate stage as a presidential candidate, having dropped out of that race in late 2019 after failing to gain much support from voters.
When she did appear in a debate, it was as Joe Biden’s running mate in the vice presidential debate against Vice President Mike Pence that October. And during that debate, she didn’t say she wouldn’t ban fracking — she said Biden wouldn’t.
“Joe Biden will not end fracking. He has been very clear about that,” she said, repeating herself moments later, “Alright, so first of all, I will repeat, and the American people know, that Joe Biden will not ban fracking. That is a fact.”
When Bash confronted Harris with the inconsistency, she shook it off, maintaining that her “values have not changed.”
2024 Kamala on if she would ban fracking: "No and I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020."
2019 Kamala: "There's no question that I'm in favor of banning fracking."
2020 Kamala on the debate stage: “Joe Biden will not ban fracking. That is a fact." pic.twitter.com/SapEoflUht
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) August 30, 2024
But that assumes facts not in evidence leading to a more fundamental question: if her values haven’t changed, why did her stance on fracking apparently shift?
To many, it has been a quite blatant example of Harris saying anything that is politically expedient at the time while diametrically opposed to what she had said before. Conservatives consider this an alarming pattern and show the lack of integrity-a trait which Americans can ill afford in a would-be president.
