AP Photo/Michael Probst
Vice President Kamala Harris said she wishes lawmakers would take on domestic threats to national security without a "partisan lens."
During an NBC News's Meet the Press interview, Harris recalled her time on the Senate Intelligence Committee and said she wishes lawmakers would address domestic threats as "Americans first."
"When we walk through the doors, Republicans, Democrats, Independents — when we walked through the door of the SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility), that secure room — press could not come in, no cameras, no public, just us. People would take off their jackets, they'd roll up their sleeves and they were Americans first — focused on the threats to our national security — on common ground, with a common purpose which is to defend our nation against attacks," Harris said.
She added: "When I think about what we have been seeing in terms of the attacks from within, I wish we would approach it the same way — as Americans instead of through some partisan lens."
When asked in the NBC interview, which aired on Sunday on the 21st anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, if threats from within the US were as dangerous as foreign threats, Harris said: "It is very dangerous and I think very harmful. And it makes us weaker."
Her remarks come more than a week after President Joe Biden warned of the dangers of extremism from MAGA Trump supporters during a primetime address.
"Democracy cannot survive when one side believes there are only two outcomes to an election: either they win or they were cheated. And that's where MAGA Republicans are today," Biden said.
On Sunday, Harris defended Biden's remarks, saying throughout his career, Biden worked "across the aisle."
"But there are moments in time when we have to also agree, all good people who care about our country, that there are those who right now are vividly not defending our democracy," Harris added. "And I think we want that our Commander-in-Chief, that the president of the United States will speak up and raise the alarm about what this means to our strength and our future, much less our integrity."
