PALM BEACH, Fla. — Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president in 2024, said Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is trying to shift positions on several key issues, including energy, immigration, crime and health care, by relying on reporters rather than explaining them herself, but that won’t work in the long run.
“I don’t think that will work,” Trump said. “She can’t do press conferences.”
Trump’s remarks were made during an exclusive hour-long interview with Breitbart News on Thursday night at his luxury seaside resort and club, Mar-a-Lago. Specifically, Harris has had reporters issue statements through the media, often anonymously, in recent weeks. change Harris reiterated her long-standing positions on everything from her support for a ban on fracking, to her support for a radical “Medicare for All” health care plan that would destroy the American health care system, to her stance on immigration and crime policy. But Harris herself has not explained whether she has actually changed her positions on these issues, and if so, why or how. Given Harris’ continued refusal to hold or explain herself at a press conference, American voters are left to trust these often nameless and faceless aides about her new positions.
The most egregious of Harris’ many recent attitude shifts is New York Post Her Monday morning cover story called her a “Kama Chameleon” on fracking.
Kama Chameleon pic.twitter.com/XLJ3fGBIi0
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 12, 2024
During her 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, Harris explicitly said she would ban fracking if elected president. Then, a few weeks ago, an anonymous campaign operative who had long held that public position said: A statement was issued To The Hill The newspaper reported that she no longer supports a ban on fracking. Although the candidate herself has not said so, and certainly has not explained herself on an issue that is so crucial to both U.S. energy and economic policy, and that has major political implications especially in battleground states including Pennsylvania, many in the media have simply assumed that she has in fact changed her stance based on the statement of this anonymous aide.
In an interview with Breitbart News, President Trump made it clear that Harris’ views on energy are extreme and radical and would be harmful to the U.S. economy.
“On energy, she wants to run everything on wind,” Trump said. “It’s crazy. She’ll destroy our country. Germany went down that road for two years under Merkel. One of the reasons Merkel’s not here anymore is because the opposition said, ‘She’s ruining our economy.’ Wind is a very expensive energy. It doesn’t work, quite frankly. It only works intermittently when the wind is blowing. It’s just crazy. Germany got rid of coal plants and everything else, and now under the new administration they’re building one a week. They know it won’t work, and they want to do it consistently. We know electric trucks don’t work. You have to make six stops to get from New York to California. Diesel doesn’t stop once.”
Trump said preparing for the debate would be easy because Harris’ confusion on the issues is just “common sense.”
“She wants open borders. She wants to defund the police. She’s always wanted that. She’s never changed. Now she wants to change,” Trump said. “She wants to say something she doesn’t believe in. She actually believes in defunding the police. She actually and absolutely believes in open borders. She was the border commissioner for three and a half years and she was the worst border commissioner in history. She’s never been to the border. She’s been told she was once, but she only went to an area of the border that had absolutely nothing to do with the problem. She was a terrible border commissioner. Millions of people have come in. I think 20 million have come into our country. It could be more, especially if you include fugitives. Fugitives are brutal. They’re coming from all over the world, not just South America. Many, many terrorists have come into our country. She wants to defund the police and she’s always been. She helped people who were trying to destroy our country, like in Minnesota, and helped them get out of prison. People died in Minnesota. They attacked the federal courthouse. They attacked everything.”
Trump told Breitbart News that Harris’ chances of winning this year were slim, pointing to her history of failed candidates and poor performance in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. He also said he was surprised that outgoing President Joe Biden chose her as his vice president even though she and other Democrats won the nomination, because he said she was “mean” to him.
“I was watching her. There were 14 candidates running, and she was the first to drop out,” Trump said. “I didn’t think she was good at all in the debates. I thought she was awful. She was mean to him, but outside of that, she was very mean to him. I was shocked when he picked her, because she was the meanest. People didn’t like what she was doing. People didn’t like her. She never made it to Iowa. She dropped out almost immediately.”
“I think Harris will have to publicly explain these important issues very soon,” Trump said. “Career politicians like Harris are usually telling the truth when they take an initial position on something, an extreme position, but it’s disingenuous to try to walk it back.”
“She has to explain,” Trump said. “Why does she want open borders and now she wants a wall? Every time this happens, I’ve watched politics for years. There are politics, there are politicians. Politicians early on say, ‘I want a wall, I want this,’ and that’s the usual posture. She says, ‘I want to defund the police,’ she wants to defund the police. And then all of a sudden she says, ‘No, I really didn’t want to say that, I really didn’t want to say that.’ And all of these policies lead to the conclusion that this is what she really wants to do. She actually thinks defunding the police is a good thing.”
Trump also said that Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, also wants to cut the police budget. Trump noted that Walz refused to send in the National Guard to protect Minneapolis in 2020 when rioters burned the city and one of its police stations was abandoned by officers.
“The governor of Minnesota thinks so too. He thinks cutting the police budget is a good thing. He says so,” Trump said. “He gave the police very little protection. Remember when they kicked the police out of their police stations? He didn’t send in the military. I sent in the National Guard. If I hadn’t sent in the National Guard, Minneapolis wouldn’t be here today. He’s not going to do that. We were calling him and saying, ‘Send in the National Guard, send in the National Guard.’ He’s not going to do that.”
More details about Trump’s latest exclusive interview with Breitbart News will be released soon.
