In an interview with CNN, Harris says she will name a Republican to the Cabinet

Aug. 29 (UPI) — Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris says in an interview airing Thursday night on CNN that if elected, she will name a Republican to her Cabinet.

The exclusive interview with Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is scheduled to air at 9 p.m. ET. Ahead of the broadcast, CNN revealed that during the exchange, Harris said she would reach out to moderates and independents alienated by Republican nominee Donald Trump’s “extremism” by appointing a Republican to her administration.

“I’ve got 68 days until the election, so I’m not going to put the cart before the horse,” he says in his first in-depth television interview since accepting the nomination. “But I would. I think it’s very important. I’ve spent my career inviting diversity of opinion. I think it’s important to have people at the table when you’re making some of the biggest decisions who have different viewpoints, different experiences.”

“And I think it would be beneficial to the American public to have a member of my Cabinet who was a Republican,” he said.

Harris and Walz are on a bus tour of the key state of Georgia as they try to build on the momentum they gained following last week’s Democratic National Convention.

Georgia, a Republican stronghold that controls all statewide elective offices, leaned toward Democrats in Joe Biden’s presidential election. Most polls show Harris tied or slightly ahead of Trump in the state.

On Thursday, the Harris-Walz campaign highlighted what it called growing support from the GOP, including an open letter signed by more than 200 Republicans who previously worked for former President George W. Bush, the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., or Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah.

“As Donald Trump continues to attack moderates and independents, as well as Republicans he doesn’t like, the Harris-Walz campaign has made clear that there is a place in our coalition for voters who reject Donald Trump’s extremism and want to put country over party,” a campaign spokesperson said.

Harris attended a solo rally in Savannah on Thursday, ending the bus tour, before visiting CNN studios in Atlanta with Walz.

Before airing the interview, the broadcaster also reported that Harris used the airtime to explain how her views on immigration and oil and gas production through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, have evolved since her failed bid for the Democratic presidential nomination four years ago.

In 2019, she spoke out against fracking, considering it a danger to climate change, but by the time eventual Democratic nominee Joe Biden chose her as his running mate, she had already changed her position and, in fact, later cast a tie-breaking vote in the US Senate to expand fracking contracts.

“We have set targets for the United States of America, and by extension the world, around when we must meet certain greenhouse gas emissions reduction standards, for example. That value has not changed,” he said.