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With the 2024 general election just three weeks out, Vice President Kamala Harris continued her aggressive media blitz as she defended her record and economic plans while assailing Donald Trump as an un-American “fascist” who isn’t fit to serve a second term in the White House.
Harris, who was in Detroit for a series of campaign appearances, took to the airwaves for an hour-long town hall hosted by popular radio host Charlamagne Tha God.
While much of the interview was tame, Harris took a tougher line than she has in many of her public appearances when talking about her rival, as she agreed with the host when he described Trump’s platform as “fascism.”
“Yes, we can say that,” she said.
Harris’s interview on Charlamagne tha God’s program is part of her campaign’s concerted effort to meet voters where they are by having her appear on popular programs that aren’t necessarily part of the mainstream media. She is reportedly considering a sit-down with Joe Rogan, whose podcast is one of the most popular programs in the country.
Her appearance in Detroit was specifically targeted towards reaching Black voters at a time when some Democrats are concerned that her support is lagging among Black men compared with President Biden’s position at this time during the 2020 election cycle.
After the radio personality opened the conversation by asking Harris to respond to critics who accuse her of being overly reliant on talking points, the vice president replied: “That’s called discipline.”
She also pointed out that “repetition” is important in politics because it ensures that people get the message she is trying to deliver.
“At my rallies, I say the same thing when I go to Detroit as I do in Philly, as I do wherever I am, to make sure that people hear and receive what critical issues that are at stake in this election,” she said.
Harris also expressed confidence that she would win the upcoming election, though she conceded that the race between her and Trump remains “a margin of error” contest with just 21 days remaining.
Pressed on criticisms she’s received about her record as a prosecutor — a record that’s been fodder for Republicans who claim she used her power and authority to gratuitously incarcerate Black men for minor marijuana violations, she pointed out that public defenders who worked with her have called her “the most progressive prosecutor in California on marijuana cases” because she “would not send people to jail for simple possession of weed.”
She pledged that as president, she’d continue the Biden administration’s work on decriminalizing marijuana because she knows “exactly how those laws have been used to disproportionately impact certain populations, and specifically Black men.”
Asked by a guest what Harris would specifically do for Black people if elected, the vice president said her work “from the beginning of my career through today” has been about helping the Black community, including by taking on issues such as Black maternal mortality as vice president.
“The work that I've done that has been about focusing on my knowledge and my experience in my life, experience of knowing, the entrepreneurship that we have in the community, the ambition, the aspirations, the dreams, and then tapping into that so that not only has my work been about ensuring that we have some of the lowest black unemployment ever in our country, but that also knowing that that should be a baseline, that everybody has a job, and what we should be invested in is also building wealth in the community,” she said.
But Harris also went after Trump in stark terms when pressed on whether the military would be available to “fight” for American freedom if Trump were to foment another violent “insurrection” by a different guest.
Harris pointed out that “those who worked the closest” with Trump — including “his chief of staff, two secretaries of defense, his national security advisor and his former vice president” — have declined to endorse his bid for another four-year term.
She also said the ex-president’s “way of trying to name-call and demean and divide” is actually a sign of weakness rather than the sign of strength his supporters view it as.
“The man is really quite weak. He's weak. It's a sign of weakness that you want to please dictators and seek their flattery and favor. It's a sign of weakness that you would demean America's military and America's service members. It's a sign of weakness that you don't have the courage to stand up for the Constitution the United States and the principles upon which it stands,” she said. “This man is weak and he is unfit.”
