Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that Vice President Kamala Harris is trying to hide her left-leaning positions rather than moving policy more to the center.
Cotton: But we know that this race will probably be decided by a few hundred thousand votes in a few states. President Trump has been campaigning hard for months now, and that will of course accelerate as the election approaches. President Trump will be contrasted with Kamala Harris, who has supported decriminalizing illegal immigration, providing taxpayer-paid health insurance to illegal immigrants, stripping 170 million Americans of workplace health insurance, banning gasoline-powered vehicles, and confiscating firearms. All of this is…
(Crosstalk)
Carl: What do you mean, take away health insurance? What are you talking about?
COTTON: When she ran for president, she said she wanted to eliminate private workplace health insurance for 170 million Americans, John.
Carl: Well, I mean, that’s not her position right now. She
(Crosstalk)
Cotton: How do you know that’s not her position? How do you know that’s not her position?
KARL: So she said she no longer supports Medicare for All.
Cotton: She never said that. She never said that. She never said that.
Carl: Okay.
COTTON: Maybe an anonymous aide said that on Friday night, but the last thing she said was,
(Crosstalk)
Karl: But this wasn’t a radical convention. As I said about Bernie Sanders, she’s not on the far left of the party. She’s clearly trying to move to the center.
COTTON: I certainly heard what you said to Senator Sanders, and I thought it was clear to me that he was very disappointed that she was making these efforts to hide her position rather than change it, John.
Americans are entirely justified in concluding, based on what she campaigned on during the last presidential election and what this administration has done over the past four years, that Kamala Harris is a dangerous San Francisco liberal.
Watching the Democratic convention last week, you would have thought that the Democrats were not in power, they were not in power, they were campaigning against an incumbent Republican, but in reality, she was part of the failure of the Biden-Harris administration over the last four years, and when she was campaigning for president on her own terms, she actually made promises like decriminalization.
Carl: I mean.
Cotton: –illegal immigration, removal —
(Crosstalk)
Karl: But it’s clear that her position has changed, and she says that she has changed.
Cotton: No, it’s not.
Carl: Oh, oh, oh, oh yeah.
Cotton: No, no, she hasn’t.
Carl: Well, she
Cotton: John, she didn’t say anything.
She’s not. You’ve pointed out repeatedly that Senator Sanders has said on the campaign trail, and anonymous aides have told reporters on background, that she no longer believes these things.
Well, maybe she has changed her position on issues like stripping away health insurance and confiscation of guns, and if she has changed her position, she has an obligation to the American people to say publicly,
Carl: Okay.
Cotton: Tell us in her own words when and why she changed. That’s one of the reasons why she has to speak to the American people and speak to these questions, because the only basis for the American people to judge what would happen if she were president is what she’s done in this administration for four years and what she said in her own voice on the last campaign trail. Remember, John, this isn’t some kind of college essay. This is what she said when she was campaigning for president as a 54-year-old woman. If she’s changed her mind so dramatically in the last five years, she owes the American people an answer.
