MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle spoke with Vice President Kamala Harris following the Democratic presidential nominee’s speech at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where she laid out an economic vision for her administration if elected.
If there was an overarching theme to the interview, it was the disconnect between the two parties’ records on the economy, the public’s perception of those records and the irony that some middle-class people — including some union members — believe former President Donald Trump has a greater understanding of their struggles than the vice president.
Here are five takeaways from this exclusive interview, her first solo sit-down since she became the Democratic nominee.
Harris’ working-class street credibility
Ruhle pointed out during the interview that “most likely voters still think Donald Trump is better to handle the economy.” But Harris articulated how she comes from a background that’s far more relatable to the struggles of most Americans.
“Part of the reason I even talk about working at McDonald’s is that there are people who work at McDonald’s in our country there who are trying to raise a family. I worked there as a student. I was a kid who worked there.” Harris added that some families are “trying to raise families and pay rent” based on that income. “I think part of the difference between me and my opponent includes our perspective on the needs of the American people and what our responsibility is to meet those needs.”
As Helaine Olen noted in an MSNBC column in April, after California’s $20-an-hour minimum wage for fast-food workers became law, the era of mostly teenagers working fast-food jobs after high school was rendered obsolete, and “well over half of California’s fast-food workers are people of color and over 25.”
In an interview in which Harris often stuck to well-rehearsed talking points, her answer about her time at McDonald’s came off as the most genuine, and it was the best evidence that she sees struggling people not as abstractions but as real human beings.
Harris knows how to needle Trump, subtly
Harris won her debate against Trump by triggering him into a rambling rage after she characterized his “big, beautiful” rallies as small, boring affairs that have many attendees seeking the exit. It was amusing, then, to see her sandwich that same point in an answer about how she’s going to keep reminding people that Trump is lying about his economic record and lying when he says he stands with workers.
Harris described the “challenge” she faces to “earn the vote of everybody.” She argued that “regardless of what somebody says in a small rally somewhere ... part of what I’m doing in this campaign is to remind people, just like here in Pittsburgh, of the reality of who has stood with union labor, who stands for American manufacturing, who stands for American jobs.”
The only two words Trump is likely to hear are “small rally.”
The pandemic doesn’t give Trump a pass on how he handled the economy
When the vice president said Trump had “left us with the worst unemploy,et rate since the Great Depression,” Ruhle pointed out that that dramatic downturn happened during the height of the pandemic.
“Even before the pandemic, he lost manufacturing jobs,” Harris countered. His raison d’être as president, Harris essentially argued, was to provide “tax cuts for the billionaires and the top corporations in our country.”
Harris’ ‘gut decisions’
When Ruhle asked Harris about the most recent time she’d made a gut decision, she answered, “Probably the biggest gut decision I’ve made most recently is to choose my running mate. There were lots of good, incredible candidates, and ultimately that came down to the gut decision.”
Though Republicans tried to make hay with the preposterous claim that antisemitism made Harris (who is married to a Jewish man) pick Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, picking Walz has proven to be a smart political choice, and it demonstrated she can make wise decisions in a limited amount of time.
Women have reason to fear a second Trump presidency
Trump has recently boasted that he’ll be women’s protector. Harris, who has made abortion rights a centerpiece of her campaign, said that’s rich coming from a man who once said women who get abortions should be prosecuted and whose Supreme Court appointees helped dismantle Roe v. Wade.
But Ruhle’s question about Trump’s statement prompted what was perhaps Harris’ best line of the interview: “I don’t think the women of America need him to say he’s going to protect them. The women of America need him to trust them.”