Vice President Kamala Harris mentioned former President Trump by name more than two dozen times during her CNN town hall on Wednesday, including when pressed about specific policies she would institute if elected to the White House.
Fox News found that during the CNN town hall in Chester, Pennsylvania, Harris mentioned Trump by name 26 times, while Trump was mentioned overall by moderator Anderson Cooper or audience members a total of 43 times. The CNN town hall kicked off at 9 p.m. on Wednesday and wrapped up around 10:15 p.m.
Harris was pressed on issues such as her border policies the last three and a half years as vice president, and how she would tackle immigration differently if she was elected president. At one point, Cooper pressed Harris on her support of a bipartisan bill that would provide funding for a border wall that she previously lambasted as a “stupid” idea when promoted by Trump during his administration.
“Let’s talk about this compromise bill that you want to pass if you are elected. You said that’s going to be a priority. It includes $650 million in funding for the border wall. That’s something Republicans wanted, that was part of the compromise. Under Donald Trump, you criticized the wall more than 50 times. You called it ‘stupid, useless, and a medieval vanity project.’ Is a border wall stupid?,” Cooper asked Harris.
Harris pivoted from directly answering the question to citing Trump.
“Let’s talk about Donald Trump and that border wall,” Harris said while laughing. “So remember, Donald Trump said Mexico would pay for it. Come on, they didn’t. How much of that wall did he build? I think the last number I saw was about 2%. And then when it came time for him to do a photo op, you know, where he did it? In the part of the wall that President Obama built.”
“So you don’t think it’s stupid anymore?” Cooper later asked.
“I think what he did and how he did it was, did not make much sense because he actually didn’t do much of anything. I just talked about that wall, right? We just talked about it. He didn’t actually do much of anything,” she responded, not citing Trump by name, but referring to his leadership as president.
