A CNN fact-checker isn't buying Kamala Harris' insistence at her first sit-down interview as presidential nominee that she clearly evolved her stance on fracking in 2020 after vowing to ban the practice a year prior.
While in Congress, Harris supported the Green New Deal and in 2019, said there was "no question" that she was in favor of a fracking ban. When CNN anchor Dana Bash asked if she still holds that position, Harris said no.
"And I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020," she said, "That I would not ban fracking. As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking."
CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale strongly disagreed with the vice president's assertion.
"The fact-check bottom line, Abby, is that she did not actually make clear at a 2020 debate that she had changed her previous support for a fracking ban," he said.
CNN played a 2019 clip of Harris nodding her head at a climate town hall as a constituent asked if she'd be in favor of a federal fracking ban.
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"There's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking," she said at the time.
Harris then ended her presidential campaign in December of that year.
"The only debate she participated in in 2020 was the general election debate with then-Vice President Mike Pence. I went over the transcript of that debate tonight – nowhere in there does she make clear she'd abandoned her previous support of a fracking ban. Rather, she repeated that Joe Biden, the head of the Democratic ticket at the time, himself wouldn't ban fracking."
The network then played a clip of Harris saying exactly that.
"Maybe other people feel differently, but I certainly do not hear in there, Kamala Harris, that she personally abandoned her previously expressed 2019 view. Rather that she was speaking for Joe Biden."
Watch the clip below or at this link.
