6 takeaways from Kamala Harris’s MSNBC interview with Stephanie Ruhle

Vice President Kamala Harris sat for a one-on-one interview with MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Wednesday, hours after delivering a speech in Pittsburgh that laid out her economic priorities.

In both the speech and the interview, Harris stressed that her policies were designed to strengthen the middle class and claimed that Trump’s favored the wealthy.

Here are the key takeaways from the roughly 30-minute interview.

Addressing voter concerns about the economy

Ruhle, who has long covered economic issues, started by asking Harris why she thought polls have shown that more voters trust Trump to handle the economy better than she would.

“Here’s what I know in terms of the facts. Donald Trump left us with the worst economy since the Great Depression when you look at, for instance, the employment numbers,” Harris said.

Ruhle then interjected context. “It was during COVID and [un]employment was so high because we shut down the government, we shut down the country,” she said.

“Even before the pandemic he lost manufacturing jobs by, most peoples’ estimates, at least 200,000,” Harris countered. “He lost manufacturing plants, ask the autoworkers. He lost auto plants. We have grown over 20 new auto plants.”

While polls show Harris gaining ground on the economy, the vice president also made sure to highlight the views of outside experts to further strengthen those numbers.

Trump’s agenda, she said, would “include tariffs to the point where the average working person will spend 20% more on everyday necessities, and an estimated $4,000 a year on those everyday necessities to the point that top economists in our country from Nobel laureates to people at Moody’s and Goldman Sachs have compared my plan with his and said my plan would grow the economy, his would shrink the economy.”

Raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy

Trump has proposed lowering the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15% and pledged to permanently extend tax cuts passed during his presidency. Harris, meanwhile, has proposed raising them to 28%, framing that decision in terms of fairness, and laying out a limit for those who should not worry about higher taxes.

“First of all, when it relates to anybody making less than $400,000-a-year, your taxes will not go up,” Harris said. “Your taxes will not go up. And, in fact, under my plan taxes for 100 million Americans will actually be cut, including $6,000 a year for young couples for the first year of their child’s life.”

Ruhle pressed Harris on whether she would borrow money to honor a pledge to reinstate the child tax credit if Democrats are unable to secure control of both houses of Congress and raise the corporate tax rate.

“We’re going to have to raise corporate taxes,” she responded, adding, “We’re going to have to make sure that the biggest corporations and billionaires pay their fair share, that’s just it. It’s about paying their fair share.”

Ruhle then asked how she would find the proper balance of taxing corporations without driving them to leave the country.

“I work with a lot of CEOs and I’ve spent a lot of time with CEOs, and I’m going to tell you that the business leaders that are actually part of the engine of America’s economy agree that people should pay their fair share.”

On Trump’s ‘protector' of women claim

Ruhle asked Harris to respond to comments made by Trump in which he described himself as a “protector” of women. During a rally on Monday, Trump also told women, “You will no longer have anxiety from all of the problems our country has today. You will be protected, and I will be your protector. Women will be happy, healthy, confident and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion.”

“So Donald Trump is also the person that said women should be punished for exercising a decision that they rightly should be able to make about their own body and their future,” Harris responded. “So I think that we would all agree that as a result of that perspective that he has about women, he also then chose three members of the United States Supreme Court who did as he intended, undid the protections of Roe v. Wade and now, in state after state, you see laws being passed that do punish women.”

“Look,” she added, “I think the thing about Donald Trump is that, you know, I don’t think the women of America need him to say he’s going to protect them. The women of America need him to trust them.”

Refutes Trump claim that she ‘lied’ about working at McDonald’s

In recent days on the campaign trail, Trump has accused Harris of making up her story about having worked at a McDonald’s restaurant when she was young.

“At any point in your life, have you served two all-beef patties, special sauce lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun?” Ruhle asked, echoing the fast food chain’s famous jingle.

“I have,” Harris responded, laughing and adding, “Part of the reason I even talk about having worked at McDonald’s is because there are people who work at McDonald’s in our country who are trying to raise a family — I worked there as a student, I was a kid — who work there trying to raise a family and pay rent on that. I think part of the difference between me and my opponent includes our perspective on the needs of the American people.”

Calls across the board tariffs ‘a sales tax on the American people’

Ruhle asked Harris about whether Trump’s proposal to impose across the board tariffs on foreign imports was a good economic strategy, noting that President Biden had imposed them on some Chinese goods.

“Part of it is you don’t just throw around the idea of just tariffs across the board, and that’s part of the problem with Donald Trump,” Harris responded. “Frankly, and I say this with all sincerity, he’s just not very serious about how he thinks about some of these issues. And one must be serious.”

Most economists regard across the board tariffs as tax increases on American consumers because they raise prices indiscriminately. Harris echoed that view on Wednesday.

“It would be a sales tax on the American people,” she said.

Was Ruhle the right choice to interview Harris?

Though Trump often sits for interviews with Fox News hosts who have made no secret of their support of his candidacy, picking Ruhle to question Harris struck many conservatives as inappropriate.

Last week, Ruhle, who has spent much of her career focussing on economic issues, was a guest on HBO’s Real Talk with Bill Maher, where she openly advocated voting for Harris.

“She’s running against Trump, we have two choices,” Ruhle told New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, who voiced skepticism about supporting either Trump or Harris. “There are some things you might not know the answer to and in 2024, unlike 2016 for a lot of the American people, we know exactly what Trump will do, who he is and the kind of threat he is to democracy.”

In a post over the weekend on Truth Social, Trump criticized Maher, Ruhle and Stephens.

“This week he had ‘dumb as a rock’ bimbo Stephanie Ruhle, from MSDNC, on the show, along with a Trump hating loser, Bret Stephens, who seemed totally confused and unsure of himself, very much like Maher himself,” Trump wrote.