With 13 days to go until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris spent Wednesday night in the battleground state of Pennsylvania as she fielded questions from undecided voters in the CNN Town Hall.
The event was moderated by Anderson Cooper and featured undecided voters as Harris answered questions on her plans for the economy, immigration, taxes, and stuck to her messaging about the dangers of a second Trump term.
In case you missed it, here are three key moments from the CNN Town Hall.
Harris thinks Trump is a fascist
The biggest news from the town hall came early on when Harris was asked by Cooper if she believes Trump is a fascist.
“Yes, I do,” she said.
However, she didn’t want voters to take her word for it, referencing military leaders and officials who served under Trump and have said the former president is a fascist – including the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley as well as John Kelly, his former Chief of Staff.
Harris gets personal
Coming into the night, there was a sense from voters still undecided that they did not know enough about the Vice President to vote for her in November’s election. She attempted to change that by answering questions about her faith and grief.
“I was raised to believe in a loving God. To believe that your faith is a verb,” Harris told voters.
“Your work and your life’s work should be to think about how you can serve in a way that is uplifting other people,” she added. “That guides a lot about how I think about my work.”
Cooper then asked her about how she approaches grief in response to a question from a woman who lost her husband a year ago.
“You don’t stop grieving,” Harris said.
“It is important to try and remember them as they lived and not as they died because the grief can really weigh you down,” she said. “I don’t think there’s any correct or proper way to grieve and the most important thing is I think that people don’t suppress what they are feeling at the moment.”
Harris struggles on immigration, Gaza
The weak moments from an overall good night for Harris came on the topic of immigration and the war in Gaza.
Cooper asked Harris if she felt the Biden administration should have issued an executive order sooner to curb the influx of migrants at the southern border.
“I think we did the right thing,” she said, adding the executive order is a temporary fix and the administration was looking for a long term solution. However, she did follow up and say if elected, she would work to find a long term issue to the problem.
When a voter asked Harris what she would do to ensure “not another Palestinian dies due to bombs being funded by U.S. tax dollars”, the Vice President recited her stump speech, calling for an end to the war.
“Far too many innocent Palestinian civilians have been killed, it’s unconscionable,” she said.
Cooper then pressed her that the issue may cause some to vote third party or not vote at all, asking what her message was to those voters.
“For many people who care about this issue, they also care about bringing down the price of groceries, why also care about our democracy and not having a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist,” she said.
