Kamala Struggled To Explain Funds For Economic Plan Off CBS Cam

Then-Democrat Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris appeared stumped when asked to explain how she would pay for her economic policies aside from taxes in a portion of the unedited CBS News interview that occurred only after the cameras stopped rolling.

During the interview that aired to the public, Whitaker noted how the Nonpartisan Committee for Responsible Federal Budget estimated that Harris’ economic plan “would add $3 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade.”

“How are you going to pay for that?” he asked.

Eventually, Harris responded by suggesting that “the richest among us, who can afford it” should “pay their fair share in taxes,” in order to pay for her policies.

“My perspective is everybody needs to pay their fair share,” she added, before invoking firefighters and teachers to try and justify disproportionately stealing money from people who make more.

At the end of the full interview, an off-screen cameraman asked host Bill Whitaker to ask Harris a question so that the team could get an over-the-shoulder shot.

“We were talking about how you were gonna pay for it, and I truly do mean it — your plans are logical, make logical sense,” Whitaker said, following up on an earlier question. “The way Washington works is not logical. So how are you going to convince a divided Congress that what you say — your plans — are something that they should all agree to and provide to the American people when they’ve shown no inclination to do that up to this point?”

“Is that what you needed?” Harris asked, seemingly referencing the over-the-shoulder shot. The crew member affirmed that it was before asking for “30 seconds of silent space for room time.”

“Cameras are off,” a crew member said following the silence in a longer version of the video. Whitaker immediately jumped in to ask Harris for an actual answer to his question.

“How will you?” Whitaker pressed, laughing.

“It’s gonna be taxes, it’s gonna be literally, the economists. I mean there, from each, the spectrum,” Harris said, stumbling through her answer before Whitaker cut her off.

“But I hear what you’re saying about the economists, this is true. But Congress is not the economists,” Whitaker responded before the clip ended.

While Harris had previously suggested taxes would be raised, her off-screen answer showed her crumbling under pressure. She had no real explanation about how anything she promised would be accomplished except through “taxes.” While it’s unclear what happened after the filming stopped, surely Harris’ response was just proof that she had no real way to get her agenda through.

As The Federalist’s Breccan Thies reported, “The release of the full transcript and video interview comes after Trump sued CBS for ‘deceptive doctoring’ of the video, which many said at the time was done essentially as a contribution to the Harris campaign.” A complaint was also filed with the FCC by the right-leaning law firm, Center for American Rights.