On August 29, Vice President Kamala Harris held her first sit-down interview since replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic Party ticket. The short interview with CNN’s Dana Bash was a heavily edited piece of political theater aimed at concealing the right-wing character of a future Harris-Walz administration and the scale of the domestic and global geo-political crisis.
Despite months of global protests attended by millions of people, Harris made clear that Palestinians will continue to be slaughtered under her administration. Questioned by Bash, who falsely claimed Biden was trying to “end the war,” would Harris do “anything differently,” such as withholding “some US weapons shipments to Israel?” Harris replied:
Let me be very clear, unequivocal and unwavering in my commitment to Israel’s defense and its ability to defend itself. And that’s not going to change.
Repeating Israeli war propaganda that was debunked months ago, Harris added:
But let’s take a step back. October 7. 1,200 people are massacred, many young people who are simply attending a music festival. Women were horribly raped. As I said then, I say today, Israel had a right, has a right to defend itself.
Bash, playing the role of a Zionist agent, did not raise the fact that many of those 1,200 killed on October 7 were victims of the Israeli military tank and helicopter attacks via the depraved Hannibal Directive. As of this writing, which follows a United Nations investigation, there has been no forensic evidence to substantiate claims of multiple “Hamas rapes” on October 7.
However, there have been dozens of well sourced reports of mass, systemic sexual abuse and psychical torture of Palestinians held hostage in Israeli military prisons. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine by the IDF with US support was another topic that went unmentioned.
When Harris briefly turned to the suffering of Palestinians, she refused to state how many had died, in the process erasing the deaths of at least 40,000 people and her culpability in it. Instead the war criminal offered the same phrases she has been using since March of this year: “Far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed, and we have got to get a deal done.”
Pressed by Bash to confirm there would “no change in policy in terms of arms and so forth?” Harris quickly replied, “No.”
Before delving into the rest of the contents of the interview itself, it is important to take note of what was not discussed. While Bash made time to ask Harris why she did not “explicitly talk about gender or race” in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, she did not raise the ongoing US-NATO war against Russia, which threatens all of humanity with a nuclear catastrophe.
There was no mention of the fact that for the first time since World War II, German tanks have been deployed inside Russia. There were no questions posed to Harris about further US military support for Ukraine under her administration, including the delivery of F-16 fighter jets.
The rising danger of global nuclear war, including pledges by a future Harris administration as outlined in the Democratic Party platform to “modernize” the US nuclear arsenal, were likewise omitted.
This political fraud extended to the breakdown of democracy in the United States. At the Democratic National Convention, Biden warned that Trump was attempting to overthrow the election again and establish a dictatorship, though he did not indicate his administration was doing anything to stop it.
In the interview, neither Harris nor Bash raised Biden’s warning and the threat of fascism in the United States. Instead, Bash asked Harris if she would “appoint a Republican to your cabinet.”
Without batting an eye, Harris replied:
Yes, I would. Yes, I would. … I think it’s very important. I have spent my career inviting diversity of opinion. I think it’s important to have people at the table when some of the most important decisions are being made that have different views, different experiences, and I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my cabinet who was a Republican.
The fact that members of the increasingly fascistic Republican Party will apparently be welcomed to the Harris cabinet is not a surprise. In order to achieve their shared class objectives of global war abroad and suppression of the class struggle at home, Harris and the Democrats are willing to eviscerate the democratic rights and living standards of the working class to secure support from their “Republican colleagues.”
This was perhaps most vividly expressed in Harris’s embrace of Trump’s anti-immigrant border agenda. Questioned by Bash why the Biden-Harris administration did not more quickly “implement sweeping asylum restrictions,” Harris blamed Trump for blocking the passage of a previously negotiated anti-immigrant bill, which includes nearly $20 billion to expand the border police apparatus.
Harris boasted that the bill “would have put 1,500 more agents on the border” and was endorsed by the “Border Patrol,” which is led by Trump supporter Brandon Judd.
The bill was initially proposed as a “compromise” from the Democrats in order to secure billions in military support for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The fact that the war funding was already passed without the anti-immigrant legislation has not deterred Harris from continuing to champion its passage.
Questioned by Bash if she would “push that legislation again,” Harris, raising her finger for effect, declared, “Not only push it. I will make sure that it comes to my desk and sign it.” Harris added, “I’m the only person who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations...I’m the only person in this race who actually served a border state as attorney general to enforce our laws and I would enforce our laws as president going forward. I recognize the problem.”
In addition to throwing out her previous “progressive” calls for “decriminalizing” the border, Harris forcefully pushed back on any notion that she would ban fracking, despite the significant environmental and health risks the industrial process poses.
“As President I will not ban fracking,” Harris said, bragging. “In fact. Dana, I cast the tie-breaking vote that actually increased leases for fracking as Vice President.”
In a statement published on X commenting on the interview, Socialist Equality Party president candidate Joseph Kishore noted Harris’s comments that Trump had “mismanaged” the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic were an admission that the “ruling class policy of mass infection and death” will continue.
“Harris stated that under Trump, ‘Hundreds of people a day were dying.’ But this is, in fact, happening now,” Kishore wrote. He continued:
It is under the Biden administration that all public health measures to stop mass infection and debilitation from COVID-19 have been eliminated, and laws are now being put in place that ban the wearing of masks. The ruling class policy of normalizing mass death and debilitation from Long COVID will continue under either Harris or Trump.
Commenting on the interview as a whole, Kishore noted:
Harris’s comments were thoroughly right-wing, in line with the character of the DNC. The Democratic Party is a party of Wall Street and imperialism. It is committed to an escalation of war abroad, which requires an escalation of the war on the working class at home. The claims from Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and others that a Harris administration will implement social reforms are lies, and they know they are lies. Everything will be sacrificed to war.
It is just over two months before the election, and the weeks ahead will see major political convulsions. There are growing expressions of working class anger, and workers are striving to break free from the stranglehold of the trade union apparatus. This is the social force that must be mobilized and armed with a socialist and revolutionary political perspective.
The contest between Harris and Trump, the Democrats and Republicans, is a contest between two reactionary factions of the corporate and financial oligarchy that is hurtling towards world war and dictatorship.
In these elections, the Socialist Equality Party is building a socialist leadership in the working class, in the US and internationally, which is the only way in which the social and democratic rights of the working class can be defended, and a way forward for humanity can be forged.