On Friday's episode of HBO's “Real Time,” host Bill Maher said Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris was “hard left” in the last presidential election, and acknowledged that she wasn't pressed enough during this week's debate about why she changed her position on fracking, but insisted “nobody cares.”
Former Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said Harris “is where she's at right now. I thought it was a great debate, one of the best I've ever seen. Certainly some of her positions are a little surprising, like how passionate she was about fracking. But I believe she's a politician, and the good news is, she wants to win this election.”
Maher agreed with the assessment that she is a politician, saying, “I don't think anything she's saying right now is conservative.”
He added, “I think it shows how far we've come. In 2019 and 2020 she was ultra-left, so-called 'woke.' That's what she was. Now I feel like she's more of a center-left. I don't know that fracking should be something that we despise in this way. What we're trying to do is put the environment in the best possible condition. That's hard. And we're not there yet. If we could go 100% solar and wind, we could, but we're still nowhere near there. We have to use other things.”
Pollster, CNN political commentator and columnist Kristen Soltis Anderson said, “Well, the reality is that gas prices were skyrocketing while she was in the White House. If she were to say, 'I changed my position on fracking because gas prices were so high and I realized we needed to produce more,' that would be great. I'm all for people to learn more and change their minds. The problem she has is that she's changed her position so many times in the past, and I don't think she was pushed enough in the debate to understand why she changed her mind in these ways, especially since her new position is so popular in Pennsylvania.”
“Nobody cares,” Maher responded, but he agreed with Harris' assessment that things have changed on many issues.
Franken and Maher also said former President Donald Trump, a potential 2024 Republican presidential candidate, should have pressured Harris.
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