CNN host Pamela Brown on Friday night pressed Mitch Landrieu, national campaign co-chair for presumptive presidential nominee Kamala Harris, about the vice president's position on the “defund the police” movement.
Landrieu appeared on “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer” to discuss Harris' previous comments from 2020, in which she said in a radio interview that the police department's budget should be reviewed to “discern whether it reflects the right priorities.”
Following footage of the interview, Brown asked Landrieu whether the vice president still held that belief. Landrieu initially said he didn't believe Harris held the same position after describing the Biden administration's policing practices, but later backed out as Brown continued to press the issue. (RELATED: Harris praises 'defund the police' movement shortly before joining Biden's 2020 candidacy)
“But at the end of the day, you said you don't believe that's still her position with what we just played. You've now made her position clear,” Brown said.
Landrieu shook his head and appeared to say “no,” but Brown then changed his tune and demanded that Harris explain her position.
“Okay, so her position is still the same? She may want to move funds away from the police department,” Brown began.
“That's not what I said. What I said is that those comments need to be taken in context,” Landrieu countered.
Brown reminded Landrieu that Harris has previously said she no longer supports cutting the police budget and asked her to clarify her position on the issue again.
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“My point is, what you just said was taken out of context,” Landrieu said. “Her position has always been that you can be tough and smart on crime, and you need to defund the police, but you also need funds and rehabilitation to make the criminal justice system safer. You can do both.”
Just two months before joining Biden's 2020 campaign, Harris appeared on New York radio show “Ebro in the Morning” in June of that year to explain her stance on the movement. In addition to questioning police budgets, Harris specifically argued that the idea of ”putting more cops on the streets to make them safer” is wrong.
“But just to be clear, does she want to take money away from the police department and put it into community services? Because that was part of the discussion,” Brown responded.
“And I said, if you look at her record as vice president, she actually worked with President Biden to over-fund the police. So her actions show that she wants to fund the police, but she also wants to do other things, because both of those things together bring safety to American streets,” Landrieu concluded.
Harris also famously praised Los Angeles' Democratic Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2020 for cutting $150 million from the police budget and instead redirecting it to social services in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in the city, according to CNN.
But after joining Biden's campaign during the election, Harris appeared to change her position on the issue. By October 2022, Harris' press secretary, Sabrina Singh, said at the time that the vice president did not support cutting funding for the police. according to To CNN.
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