Vice President Kamala Harris has been on a nonstop media blitz lately, appearing on several platforms with largely Black audiences.
One key voting bloc her campaign has been attempting to garner support from is Black men, a group she says she intends to earn their vote.
Some of the media outlets targeting Black voters that Harris has interviewed with include The Shade Room, Roland Martin Unfiltered, and the “All the Smoke” podcast, hosted by former NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson.
The 2024 Democratic nominee was recently in Detroit participating in an audio town hall with Charlamagne Tha God from The Breakfast Club, where she insisted that she will beat Donald Trump in the November general election.
“I’m going to win,” she repeated twice. “But it’s tight. And what is at stake is truly profound and historic.”
The presidential race is less than a month away and it’s very close, according to recent national polls. For example, an Emerson College Polling national survey finds 49 percent of voters support Democrat Kamala Harris, while 48 percent support Republican Donald Trump for president in 2024.
One percent of voters said they’d support someone other than the major prominent nominees, and two percent are undecided.
During the town hall, Harris took a myriad of questions from attendees, including Black men from Michigan, local callers and others in the small studio audience.
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Harris has outlined her economic plan aimed at Black Americans, while Trump appears to shy away from providing specific details about his plan for them.
Her interview comes as former President Barack Obama’s comments regarding Black men choosing not to support Harris triggered mixed reactions.
During the hourlong town hall-style interview, Harris addressed her tenure as a prosecutor in California, where she is accused of imprisoning thousands of Black men on drug charges, and her appeal to Black churches.
Charlamagne also pressed her on issues surrounding the U.S. border crisis and how some critics have questioned her scripted-style campaign speeches.
Here are five key takeaways from the Harris town hall:
‘One of the most progressive prosecutors’
Harris addressed allegations regarding her prosecutorial record on marijuana offenses against Black men. She clarified that as a former prosecutor, she prioritized progressive policies and sought to prevent the incarceration of individuals for simple possession.
Charlamagne said: “One of the biggest pieces of misinformation, one of the biggest allegations against you, is that you targeted and locked up thousands of Black men in San Francisco for weed. .. Please tell us the facts. What’s the facts of that situation?”
“It’s just simply not true. And then what public defenders around those days will tell you is that I was one of the most progressive prosecutors in California on marijuana cases, and would not send people to jail for simple possession of weed,” Harris explained. “And as vice president [I] have been a champion for bringing marijuana down on the schedule. So instead of it being ranked up there with heroin, we bring it down. And my pledge as president: I will work on decriminalizing it because I know exactly how those laws have been used to disproportionately impact certain populations and specifically Black men.”
Harris recently pledged to decriminalize marijuana as president, highlighting the need to change laws that disproportionately impact Black communities.
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The Black church
A Black church leader took the microphone to emphasize the significance of Black churches in communities of color.
When asked about her plans to engage with Black churches if elected, Harris said that she had “grown up” in a Black church and that any suggestion otherwise was slander by the “Trump team.”
Harris claimed the Trump campaign is “full of mis- and disinformation because they are trying to disconnect me from the people I have worked with and that I am from,” she said, adding that “because otherwise they have nothing to run on.”
On the other hand, the Trump campaign hosted a coalition of Black pastors in Detroit who cited opposition to abortion rights and a desire to prioritize biblical values over party loyalties.
Harris defends her record on the border
The radio host pressed Harris about her record on the border, an issue Trump and other Republicans accuse Democrats of failing to address.
“Doesn’t the Biden administration have to take some blame for the border? A lot of the blame…the first three years, you did get a lot of things wrong with the border,” Charlamagne said.
Harris responded: “No, Charlamagne. Within hours of being inaugurated, the first bill we passed before…the Inflation Reduction Act, before we did the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, before we did the Safer Communities Act to deal with gun violence. The first thing we dropped was a bill to fix the broken immigration system, which, by the way, Trump did not fix when he was president.”
‘Very scripted’
Charlamagne Tha God questioned Harris about her authenticity, noting that “folks say you come off as very scripted.” Critics have said Harris’ speeches appear scripted, while Trump often touts his nonuse of teleprompters and goes off the cuff.
Harris replied, “That would be called discipline.” She admitted that her stump speeches are repetitive but emphasized the importance of reiterating her platform due to the high stakes.
“The reality is that there are certain things that must be repeated to have everyone know what I stand for,” she explained.
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Trump’s false claims about Haitian immigrants
In her interview, Vice President Kamala Harris criticized Trump’s false claims about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets, which led to a flood of public figures denouncing the comments from GOP figures
“Look what he did in saying that those legal immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating their pets,” Harris said.
She called it a distraction from Trump’s efforts to derail a bipartisan border deal, adding, “The hypocrisy of it abounds because on the issue of immigration, some of the most conservative members of Congress came up with the strongest, toughest border security bill in a long, long time.”
