Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., got into a verbal sparring match with ABC News’ Jonathan Karl after he dismissed Vice President Kamala Harris’ past commitment in abolishing private health insurance during an on-air exchange that aired on Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
Cotton pushed against Harris for her support for policies “like supporting decriminalizing immigration, or giving taxpayer funded health insurance to illegal aliens” and argued that former President Trump, who is running against her, will work to draw a “sharp contrast” from her platform during the leadup to this year’s Presidential Election.
Cotton than brought up Harris’ prior support for “taking away health insurance on the job for 170 million Americans” which saw the conversation take a noticeable turn.
“What do you mean taking away health insurance? What are you talking about?” Karl pressed as Cotton continued to press far-left issues that the Harris campaign had previously embraced, via Yahoo News.
Cotton reminded Karl that Harris had supported eliminating private health insurance as part of her “Medicare-for-all” push during her 2019 presidential campaign.
“I mean, that is not her position now,” Karl said in response saying that Harris said she no longer supports “Medicare-for-all.”
“How do you know that is not her position now?” Cotton pushed. “She has not said that. Maybe anonymous aides on a Friday night have said that, but the last thing that she said…” he continued before Karl again interjected.
Karl would later praise Harris for for “making an effort to move to the middle” of her party.
“She’s taking these efforts not to change these positions but to hide these positions,” Cotton jousted. “The American people are totally justified to conclude that Kamala Harris is a dangerous San Francisco liberal based on what she campaigned on the last time she ran for president and what this administration has done the last four years.
“You would’ve thought watching the DNC last week that the Democrats are not in office, they’re not in power, that they’re campaigning against an incumbent Republican, when in reality, she’s been part of the failures of the Biden-Harris administration for four years and when she campaigned for president in her own right, she did in fact promised things…”
The two than had a tense back-and-forth over Harris’ positions on issues in the past, and presently during her run for President.
Now, others in the media are calling out Karl, and others in the media circle, for not pressing Harris on her different positions and her efforts to avoid engaging on the topic during press engagements and in interviews.
“For the sake of argument let’s say she has changed her position. Jon Karl and the rest of the corporate press seem totally uninterested in WHY she suddenly changed all these positions she campaigned on in 2020, and they will never ask her about it,” The Federalist’s senior editor John Daniel Davidson wrote.
