Kamala Harris and Tim Walz faced questions from CNN’s Dana Bash on Thursday evening, the first interview the pair have given since Walz was announced as Harris’ running mate for the 2024 presidential election.
Harris has faced repeated criticism from Republican figures for not granting an interview or having held a news conference since President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign.
The vice president and Minnesota governor’s White House bid has caused a surge of excitement in the Democratic Party, with polls showing that the vice president is improving on Biden’s numbers and leading Donald Trump.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz celebrate during the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Newsweek has fact-checked their first joint interview, with CNN’s Dana Bash.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Newsweek’s Fact Check team has examined some of the significant claims from the interview in finer detail.
How long was the interview?
Harris critics claimed that the interview only lasted 18 minutes, comparing some of the far lengthier but unconfrontational podcast conversations Trump has agreed to.
However, the full interview has been released by CNN, clocking in at just under 27 minutes, along with a full transcript.
Newsweek has contacted a CNN media representative for comment.
Harris on jobs
The vice president claimed the Biden administration created “over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs” and “300,000 new clean energy jobs.”
These claims have some caveats. According to seasonally adjusted data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, there were 12,953,000 manufacturing jobs in the U.S. as of July 2024, up from 12,188,000 in February 2021, just after Biden took office, an increase of 765,000.
At its peak over the past four years, total manufacturing employment reached 12,966,000, an increase of 778,000 jobs, not “over 800,000” as Harris has claimed.
It’s possible that Harris was referring to non-seasonally adjusted data, which is not controlled for effects that normally occur each year such as holidays, climactic conditions, and production cycles. This shows an increase of more than 900,000 since January 2021. The figures the Harris campaign has used may take account of these disparities.
Newsweek has contacted a Kamala Harris media representative for comment.
While some have pointed out that these increases do not exclude jobs recovered since the pandemic, analysis by PolitiFact from December 2023 shows that the increase in percentage terms has been among the most significant when compared to other presidents’ records on manufacturing employment in post-recession periods.
The clean energy jobs figure appears to be based on an estimate by the advocacy group Climate Power, which tracked the announcement of 334,565 clean energy jobs since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, based on private sector announcements.
However, the list includes jobs that have been announced but not yet filled, and temporary employment.
The Department of Energy stated in a recently published report that clean energy employment increased by 142,000 jobs between 2022 and 2023. The previous year’s report stated an increase of 114,000 clean energy jobs between 2021 and 2022.
Harris on the economy
Harris told Bash that inflation had reduced to under three percent and that America had recovered from COVID “faster than any wealthy nation around the world.”
Inflation is currently at 2.9 percent, its lowest level since March 2021, and down from a peak of 9.1 percent in June 2022.
The Organization for Economic cooperation and Development (OECD) shows that U.S. GDP has increased by 9.4 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels. This is above the growth for all G7 nations and above the growth of all OECD nations on average.
Harris on immigration
The vice president was quizzed about record U.S. immigration figures and the role handed to her by Biden to address the root causes of migration in the Northern Triangle of Central America: Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Harris claimed there had been a reduction in “immigrants coming from that region.”
Figures from U.S. Customs and Border Protection show that for all southwest land border encounters between October 2021 and September 2023 the total number of people classified as El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras citizens has fallen annually year-on-year.
However, YTD figures for 2024 surpass last year’s. CBP has reported 365,246 encounters with people from these three nations between October 2023 to July 2024 compared with 346,704 during the same period last year.
Harris on fracking
The vice president’s position on fracking has been attacked by political opponents having previously stated she was in favor of a ban. Harris told Bash: “I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020—that I would not ban fracking. As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking.”
However, most of Harris’s comments on the topic during the 2020 Vice Presidential debate were about Joe Biden’s position stating that he would not ban fracking. In fact, Harris appeared to deny committing to banning fracking during that debate. Former Vice President Mike Pence claimed Biden and Harris had both “repeatedly committed to abolishing fossil fuel and banning fracking” to which Harris replied, “That’s not true.”
Harris also said she cast a “tiebreaking vote that actually increased leases for fracking as vice president.” This may be a reference to her tiebreaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act. The Act included provisions to increase oil and gas leasing. Newsweek has contacted Harris representatives for figures demonstrating an increase in natural gas leases.
Walz defends comments
The only specific claim Walz made not addressed by Harris was his suggestion that a Trump presidency could lead to an “abortion ban.”
As Newsweek has stated before, Trump has not called for a national abortion ban, saying that decision-making should be left to the states, and Project 2025—described by some as a Trump government blueprint which the former president has attempted to distance himself from—does not mention this either.
Walz also defended comments he previously made about carrying “weapons of war,” despite having not seen open combat when deployed in Italy in 2003 as part of America’s war on terror, which was mainly fought in Afghanistan, and a statement about him and his wife using fertility treatments which were interpreted to mean they had undergone IVF.
