Transcript of Trump vs. Harris on the Issues That Matter to Voters

She could do a press conference and explain how it works, right? She'd come out to a press conference and say, Hey, this is my background. This is why I know so much. This is the jobs I've had as a kid. I worked in all these jobs. But where's she?

Ever since Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket, the Trump campaign has been calling on her to sit for an interview and face tough questions. Well, Thursday night in a CNN exclusive, she did just that.

You had a lot of Republican speakers at the convention. Will you appoint a Republican to your cabinet?

Yes, I would. Anyone in mind? No one in particular in mind. I got 68 days to go with this election, so I'm not putting the car before the horse, but I would, I think.

Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walls, answered a variety of questions from my colleague, Dana Basch. They covered a lot of ground here, but a large portion of the conversation centered around policy.

Do you still want to ban fracking?

No, and I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020, that I would not ban fracking. As vice President, I did not ban fracking. As President, I will not ban fracking.

Dana had questions about specifics, and so do voters. So today, let's take a closer look at those policy promises from both candidates. My guest is CNN Chief Domestic Correspondent Phil Mattingly. We're going to break down what Trump and Harris are saying about two issues voters say matter most to them, the economy and immigration. From CNN, This is One Thing. I'm David Wright.

So, Phil, it's September. This is traditionally when people who don't follow politics super closely start tuning in.

Of course, this year, it would have been hard to miss everything that happened over the summer.

An assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, Joe Biden dropping out of the race, Kamala Harris taking over. But mail-in ballots go out to North Carolina voters later this week. People are about to start making decisions here. I really want to zero in on what these two candidates are actually saying about what they would do if they win. You've been following this closely, right?

Yeah. I mean, first up, that list of things that happened this summer, pretty chill summer for all of us. It has been a crazy time. I think that actually emphasizes why digging in on the policy side of things is really important right now. You see discontent in the country, particularly on the economic side. You see two candidates that, believe it or not, actually do have proposals that are somewhat interesting and in many cases, quite different.

Right. The economy is the number one issue most voters say they care about. So Where do these two diverge in how they plan on tackling this?

I think on taxes is probably the greatest diversion. Donald Trump had the cornerstone legislative achievement of his one term in office was the 2017 tax cuts. They are pretty dramatic cuts, both on the corporate side down to 21%, on the individual rate side as well, including higher earners, bringing that top bracket down by several percentage points. Kamala Harris does not want to extend the top tier, the higher bracket, the wealthy tax cuts, essentially. They all sunset next year, so it's going to be a massive battle. She also wants to increase the corporate rate.

So I know how to fight for people who are being exploited in the housing market. And I know what home ownership means.

I think the other issue right now that we see a lot of focus on is on housing. And this is where Kamala Harris is starting to build on what the Biden administration has put together or at least put on the table right now.

There's a serious housing shortage. In many places, it's too difficult to build, and it's driving prices up. As President, I will work in partnership with industry to build the housing we need both to rent and to buy. We will take down barriers and cut red tape, including at the state and local levels.

She's proposing a plan that build 3 million houses. The Biden administration is at 2 million, so building on it a little bit. Then also a first-time home buyer credit at $25,000, an expansion of the child tax credit, which was so effective on a temporary basis in the first two years of the Biden administration.

She likes the child tax credit, too, right?

So here's what's interesting. Yes, he likes the idea of talking about the child tax credit. What Trump did in that 2017 tax law was actually expand the refundability components of the existing acting tax credit. It meant basically, if you don't make enough money to be taxed, right? There's a lot of people who don't make high enough income to actually face taxation on a significant basis on the individual level, you would still be eligible for at least some of the tax credit. That's different than what the Biden administration did in the American rescue plan, which was expand the tax credit, and they actually turned it into a direct payments process as well. They actually are different on the issue in terms of the specific policy. The Harris policy would certainly be more expansive. The Trump policy is basically, I did that first, and you guys liked it, and I did it more. And so Trump and his running mate, who's been at the head of this in the conservative side of things, have been trying to shift a little bit on that front as well.

On tariffs, because that was Trump's whole thing when he was in office and he still talks about it, is a potential Harris administration on board with that idea?

No. Actually, this is That's what the Harris team wants to point out on a regular basis. Look, if you think inflation is bad right now and you hate the cost of goods, if you hate what you have to buy when you go to the store or at least how much it costs, what Trump plans on tariffs is inflation It's extraordinary. It just is. It is. How Trump views tariffs in terms of who actually shoulders the costs is very different than economists have ever really viewed tariffs.

I took in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs from China. Hundreds of billions of dollars. No president ever took in 10 cents. What happened was an amazing thing. We had a great, successful country, and our country-Trump doesn't view tariffs as a straight-line economic policy tool.

He views it very much as a foreign policy tool. He talks about it constantly at his rally.

It's like a punishment.

Yes, where he uses them for everything. We're going to have 10 to 20% tariffs on foreign countries that have been ripping us off for years.

We're going to charge them 10 to 20% to come in and take advantage of our country because that's what they've been doing for nothing, to take our jobs. We're going to charge them and bring back millions and millions of jobs by doing so and billions and billions of dollars. I did that with China.

If you want to go to war, I'm going to threaten to slap 100% tariffs on four different items or these goods that you produce, and therefore, you aren't going to want to go to war anymore. He claims without actual specific evidence that that was actually an effective tactic in stopping certain conflicts in his first term. He wants to expand on his tariffs from his first term, which already dramatically shifted the approach in terms of trade and protectionism that we'd seen over the course of several decades prior from both parties. The interesting element is the Biden administration kept a lot of those tariffs because they realized, one, taking them off, particularly in the issue of China, would make them look weak, or we open them up to criticism. Two, there was some validity behind the argument, particularly as we were trying to, post-pandemic, deal with supply chain issues on specific goods, like semiconductors, things like that. They've kept some of them in place. What Trump is proposing for a second term is a significant expansion. The Harris team says that citizens are going to bear the burden of that, and that is inflationary on its face.

I hear them both talking about no taxes on tips. Can you explain what they mean when they say that?

Yeah. I mean, this is one of those fascinating elements. Trump gets very angry that he doesn't get credit for coming up with it first because Harris has decided that she wants to do it as well.

Waiters, waitresses, caddies, a lot of great people, people that drive cars, no tax on tips. All of a sudden, out of the blue, she comes out. That was months ago, I said that. She came out and she said, No tax on tips.

This is That's something also that economists, when they look at it on its face, say, That doesn't make a lot of sense from a tax code perspective. He literally told the story. He was at a dinner in Las Vegas, and he asked his server how things were going. This is according to him, and the server was complaining about inflation prices and all those things, and also pointed out that the tips, which is where they can make a lot of their take home, were being taxed, and that was unfair. Trump proceeded to tell his team that he wanted to propose no tax on tips. Harris has taken a scaled-down version of no tax on tips, which wouldn't apply to as much of the swath that Trump is targeting. The reality here, just to cut through all of it, is this is about Nevada. The service entry workers in Nevada are a huge component of the voting base, particularly in County, the biggest county in the state. 70%, I think, of the population is where Las Vegas is. Nevada is a swing state. Nevada is extraordinarily tight. It has been extraordinarily tight in the national race or in presidential races for cycle after cycle.

And Trump's trying to eat into that. Republicans feel like they have a good shot there. And Harris is trying to block that on this specific policy proposal.

I want to move to immigration because it's another big concern of voters, especially Republican voters. But it seems to me like these two would talk about the issue very, very differently. Is that accurate?

Yes. Although with the caveat of where Democrats are on this issue now, the Overton window has shifted dramatically. They are getting killed on it politically. There's no question about it. There is a significant problem at the Southern border, and they will acknowledge that it is at a crisis level or had been at a crisis level. It's been down over the course of the last couple of months. There are a lot of reasons for this. It is not because people are sending their prisoners and their people from mental institutions or whatever Trump says every single time he speaks about it. There's never been any proof of that. We have nothing to base that on.

Joe Biden and I, in our administration, worked with members of the United States Congress on an immigration issue that is very significant to the American people and to our security, which is the border.

What Harris has gotten behind is the bipartisan proposal that was put together in the US Senate, which moved sharply away from where Democrats had been on this issue, which was, We will give you border security, and even if it's some elements of the wall, the border wall that Trump wants, we'll crack down on things like asylum and the asylum rules, which used to be an anathema to Democrats. Their trade-off was always, We want a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million plus undocumented immigrants that are in this country. That's not part of the deal anymore. That's not part of the Senate bill. It underscores just how much Democrats have shifted on this issue. Something that you said in 2019, when you first ran, there was a debate. You raised your hand when asked whether or not the border should be decriminalized.

Do you still believe that? I believe there should be consequence. We have laws that have to be followed and enforced that address and deal with people who cross our border illegally.

And there should be- But that's what Harris has gotten behind. And the reason why they believe it's politically effective, at least in mollifying the issue, is Trump personally helped kill that legislation. House Republicans listened to him, and they didn't even take it up.

The first and most urgent action when we win will be the sealing of the border, stopping the invasion. Drill, baby, drill. Send Joe Biden's illegal aliens back home.

We'll do a lot of all of those things. What Trump wants to do is a... I don't want to sound hyperbolic. It is a massive expansion of what he tried to do in his first term.

And it will be the largest deportation in the history of our country. And we have no We have no choice.

The central component of what Trump wants to do, besides re implement everything he did in the first term and start building on it, is a mass deportation operation.

Mass deportation.

Mass deportation to the point Which if you want to understand how this issue has shifted, at the Republican Convention, they actually were handing out signs for people to hold that said mass deportation now. That's why. It was by far the most popular sign. I was on the floor throughout the entire convention, and people were clamoring for that sign, not Trump Vance, not MAGA, not any of that type of stuff. They wanted mass deportation now.

It's not a nice thing to say, and I hate to say it. Those clowns in the media will say, Oh, he's so He said, No, no, they're killing our people. They're killing our country. They're killing our people. We have no choice.

His analog is the Eisenhower administration. It was short of the call Operation Wetback, which If you think it sounds racist, it is. That operation implemented by the Eisenhower administration pulled on a couple of statuts that have been in place for a century or more to quite literally go around, find as many people as you possibly could, and immediately send them back. It would cost insane amounts of money. It would require a mass shift of personnel, law enforcement, DHS, and also a significant amount of cooperation from state and local authorities. Trump has not explained has not explained where he would get the money. Trump has not explained how he would shift those resources, and he also has not explained exactly how he's going to either incentivize or force state and local authorities to cooperate with them. But what he has said unequivocally is if you are undocumented and you are in this country, their primary number one focus will be removing you as quickly as possible. That has huge implications, not just on immigration or border security, but also on the economy.

Yeah. Wouldn't it impact jobs and people that employ all those people?

We are talking not 0.002 points. We're talking full points off of GDP or gross domestic product, growth in jobs, production, a across the board. Now, the Trump folks say, That's great. That will incentivize wage growth. That will incentivize job opportunities for people who can't find jobs who are US citizens. There is not a lot of evidence that it's not as clean as that. I don't think people really totally grasp it yet. Part of the reason why is because Trump never really goes much further in terms of explaining how it would happen. That's intentional, but people should know that his team very much has a plan. Not only does he have a team of advisors who knows how it all works, found themselves to be quite effective in their first term, but they're all still around him, and they have all been mapping this out from a legislative perspective, from a statute perspective, and from an executive order perspective over the course of the last several years.

So this is all super helpful in delineating some of this stuff. But bottom line, do we know if any of these differences or these specific plans will actually sway independent voters one way or the other? Or are we just truly in a vibes election, like some people have said we've been in for years now?

I think if we had an answer to that, I think the best frame that I've heard, and I've gotten this from folks I trust on both sides, which is the reason why you're seeing Harris put out new proposals on housing or on price gouging with grocery stores. Another thing economists don't necessarily support, even on their side, is they don't know the answer. If it were just vibes, you wouldn't see Harris putting out any new policy. If it were just vibes, you wouldn't see Donald Trump focusing entirely on mass deportation. What they believe is that they are looking at cross tabs on specific issues. What do voters care about? What do they know most about? What are the things that bother them the most? Obviously, the economy and immigration are very high up there. Abortion is up there very highly as well, which is why you've seen Trump trying to find a way to secure a middle ground on that front. Is they're trying to put out proposals that address those issues on the front-end so they can talk about them. Then if they can implement them when they get an office, great, but maybe not go so far that they leave themselves vulnerable or open politically to get torn apart on those specific issues.

Policy matters. It has to matter. But if policy really was the most important thing in the world, we would set up a debate where both candidates just sit there and talk about the fact that the 2017 tax cuts, quite literally, on the individual side, sunset in 2025. Everyone cares about that. That matters to every single person in this country. We haven't seen that debate break out as much as I would love it. Probably wouldn't be great TV. But so I think we don't know the answer yet. Right now, I think as you laid out, based on this summer, no one really knows anything, and we should be both self-aware and somewhat humble in that regard. And I think that doesn't exclude the campaigns. I think they're in the same spot right now. I think where people are and what they tell posters and what they tell campaigns as they're tracking them or talking to them is largely going to dictate how these campaigns operate on the policy side going forward.

As you mentioned, debates. We have another one in about 10 days. If both candidates show up, we will see. Phil, thank you.

Thanks, man. Appreciate it.

One Thing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by me, David Reind. Our senior producers are Felicia Patinkin and Fez Jamil. Matt Dempsey is our production manager. Dan Dizula is our technical director, and Steve Ligtai is the executive producer of CNN Audio. We get support from Haley Thomas, Alex Manisari, Robert Mather's, John Dianora, Lanie Steinhart, Jamis Andres, Nicole Passereau, and Lisa Namarau. Special thanks to Wendy Brundage and Katie Hinman. We've got another episode on Wednesday. In the meantime, if you like the show, easiest thing you can do to help us out, just tell somebody about it. We appreciate it.

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