Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday defended the policy shifts she has made since her 2019 run for president, telling CNN, "I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed."
"You mentioned the Green New Deal. I have always believed — and I have worked on it — that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time," she told Dana Bash in her first sit-down interview with a journalist since President Joe Biden stepped aside on July 21 and endorsed her to replace him as the Democratic presidential nominee.
"We did that with the inflation Reduction Act. We have set goals for the United States of America — and by extension, the globe — around when we should meet certain standards for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions," she said.
"As an example, that value has not changed."
Harris went on, "My value around what we need to do to secure our border — that value has not changed.
"I spent two terms as the attorney general of California, prosecuting transnational criminal organizations, violations of American laws, regarding the passage — illegal passage — of guns, drugs, and human beings across our border," she said. "My values have not changed."