SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
A week of fierce campaigning in battleground states - NPR's Ron Elving joins us. Ron, thanks so much for being with us.
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: Vice President Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, gave their first broadcast interview since they became the Democratic ticket. I - you know, you have to ask it like you're asking a theater critic. How do you think they did?
ELVING: I'd say they held their own, and you knew they had because the conservative media sphere erupted in criticism of the interview and CNN and the host of the show, Dana Bash. Now, Bash had asked Harris if voters could feel confident what she says now will, in fact, be her administration's policy. And here's what she said.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: The most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed.
ELVING: Which is what candidates say when they've changed positions. Harris had been on record as a candidate in 2019 vowing to ban fracking. When she got on the ticket with Biden in 2020, she switched to his position on the issue, promising not to ban it. Now that's a classic shift from primary to general and a running mate bowing to the view of the presidential nominee when they conflict. Her motivations were clear in both cases, and now she's on her own, and she's sticking with the Biden view and saying she's learned a lot about growing the green economy without banning fracking.
SIMON: Donald Trump was at Arlington this week on the third anniversary of an attack in Afghanistan that killed 13 U.S. service members. As NPR's Quil Lawrence reported, there was a confrontation between a Trump campaign staffer and a cemetery employee where politics and unauthorized photographs aren't permitted. The Harris campaign called the confrontation sad. Here's what JD Vance said. He blamed the vice president for the U.S.'s 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, telling a rally in Pennsylvania...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JD VANCE: Kamala Harris is so asleep at the wheel that she won't even do an investigation into what happened, and she wants to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up. She can - she can go to hell.
VANCE: Kamala Harris is so asleep at the wheel that she won't even do an investigation into what happened, and she wants to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up. She can - she can go to hell.
SIMON: But, Ron, didn't President Trump deal directly with the Taliban to negotiate that withdrawal?
ELVING: It's not clear just what Senator Vance is proposing to investigate here. As for the Arlington incident, the Army has backed up the national park employee who was pushed aside for enforcing the policy against political ads being made at Arlington. But if Vance is talking about investigating what happened in Afghanistan back before his own election to the Senate, there's no doubt the withdrawal was, in fact, negotiated and signed in treaty form in February 2020 by Trump's secretary of state, Mike Pompeo. And it was Trump himself who announced while still president that the remaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan should be home for Christmas 2020, again, before Biden had even become president. And, in fact, in the spring and summer of 2021, he was still attacking Biden for delaying the withdrawal of U.S. troops that Trump had sent in motion.
SIMON: Less than two weeks away from a debate between Trump and Harris. In many ways, it was one debate that sunk President Biden's reelection bid. What are the stakes for this one?
ELVING: They could not be higher. The TV audience for that CNN interview was a little more than 6 million, according to Nielsen. The audience for this debate - maybe 10 times that or more. The June 27 debate between Trump and Biden drew 51 million, according to Nielsen, and that was not as many as the first debate between Trump and Biden in 2020 or between Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016. So there's every reason to expect a massive audience on Sept. 10. These fall debates always matter, Scott, even only at the margins. But there's a sense out there this one could be for all the marbles. Trump can be counted on to do all he can to bulldoze Harris off the stage. But if she holds her ground, she'll be closer than ever to being the first woman president.
SIMON: Ron Elving, thanks so much.
ELVING: Thank you, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
