Five takeaways from Harris’ interview with Stephen Colbert

WASHINGTON – Vice President Kamala Harris cracked open a Miller High Life beer with Stephen Colbert Tuesday night and blasted her opponent former President Donald Trump over his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, his 2020 election loss and other issues.
The interview comes as Harris has been on a media blitz this week in an attempt to reach out to potential voters less than a month from Election Day. She had appearances on ABC’s “The View,” CBS’s “60 Minutes,” and SiriusXM’s “The Howard Stern Show.”
Since Harris entered the race in late July, she told Cobert it’s “been a whirlwind.”
“There’s a lot of catching up to do. You know, my opponent, the former president, has been running since 2020… People are exhausted by that old tired playbook of Donald Trump’s,” she said.
“Folks are ready to turn the page,” she added. 
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Here are some takeaways from the interview:
Both Harris and Trump faced off in Philadelphia last month for their first presidential debate, sparring over issues such as abortion and immigration.
There was one particular moment – which later went viral – of Harris resting her chin on her hand with a frown as she listened to Trump knocking her on he debate stage. 
“Can you tell us what you’re thinking at this moment right here? And keep in mind, this in CBS, so keep it clean,” said Colbert.
Harris said, “It’s family TV, right? It starts with a W, there’s a letter between it, then the last letter’s F.”
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Colbert asked Harris what he said a lot of Republicans were avoiding to answer: “Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?”
Harris recalled what she’s heard from supporters at her rallies.
“I’m going to tell you what some of the people in my rallies — quite a few people show up, by the way — you know, when you lost millions of jobs, you lost manufacturing, you lost automotive plants, you lost the election. What does that make you? A loser,” Harris said.
“This is what somebody at my rallies said. I thought it was funny,” she added.
Harris chuckled and joked, “This is what happens when I drink beer!”
During the interview, Colbert brought up a recent revelation from journalist Bob Woodward’s book about how Trump had as many as seven phone calls with Putin since he left office in 2021.
“Donald Trump – he openly admires dictators and authoritarians. He has said he wants to be a dictator on day one if he were elected again as president,” Harris said. 
“He gets played by these guys. He admires so-called strongmen and he gets played because they flatter him or offer him favor,” she added. 
Woodward has also reported in his book that Trump gave COVID-19 testing machines to Putin at a time when such testing was rare. 
“I ask everyone here and everyone who is watching: do you remember what those days were like? You remember how many people did not have tests and were trying to scramble to get them?” Harris said angrily during the interview.
She later added that the American people should be your “first friend.”
Harris sent a warning to viewers at home about the federal response to Hurricane Helene: “There’s a lot of misinformation and I beseech you, I beg you to please not pay attention to it.”
Her remarks come as Trump has spread baseless claims of hurricane relief efforts, including allegations that there are “no helicopters, no rescue” in North Carolina and that the federal government is only giving $750 to those who have lost their homes. 
“What just upsets me so is the idea that any politician would play political games with these folks, with people who are in the midst of such suffering…for the sake of political gain, tell these lies in a way that is meant to make people distrust the help that is there for them,” she said. 
Harris noted that she’s spoken with governors of both parties who are working to get aid to victims.
During the interview Harris said there needs to be a hostage deal and ceasefire “immediately” in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
“This war has got to end. It has to end. We cannot lose some belief in the possibility of it. Because then, to your point, we throw up our hands instead of rolling up our sleeves,” she said.
Colbert said that briefly there have been discussions about a ceasefire deal being close at times, and he asked her what “close” means.
“Close means that a lot of the details have been worked out but details remain. And so there has been some progress but it is meaningless unless a deal is actually reached, so I don’t want to suggest to you that we should be applauded for getting close at times to a deal,” she said.