MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle called out Vice President Kamala Harris for not answering her question on how she plans to raise taxes with what would likely be a divided government.
In a preview clip of her interview with the Democratic nominee that aired Wednesday, Ruhle pressed where Harris would “get the money” to fund her pricey economic proposals if Republicans on Capitol Hill block her efforts to raise the corporate tax rate.
“Do you still go forward with those plans and borrow?” Ruhle asked.
“But we’re gonna have to raise corporate taxes,” Harris responded. “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.”
Appearing on “Deadline: White House” after the interview, Ruhle admitted that Harris “doesn’t answer the question.”
“If the GOP is controlling the Senate, if she can’t raise corporate taxes, where is she going to get the money from to expand the child tax credit and do whatever she wants to do. And she says, ‘we just have to do it,’” Ruhle told her MSNBC colleague Nicolle Wallace. “That’s great and that’s a campaign promise, but the issue is, if it means we’re gonna just borrow again, then what we’re doing is we’re just never addressing the deficit. And back in the days when you were a proud Republican, debts and deficits matters.”
MSNBC HOST DEFENDS HARRIS AVOIDING POLICY QUESTIONS: SHE’S ‘NOT RUNNING FOR PERFECT’
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The liberal host did, however, defend Harris, insisting former President Trump would “balloon” the deficit “significantly bigger than Vice President Harris will.”
“It’s like the American people have forgot or we no longer think debt and deficits matter. They will at some point as they balloon. She’s saying, ‘it doesn’t matter, we’re going full steam ahead,'” Ruhle said. “I mean, I don’t fault her for it because the the American people aren’t prioritizing saying you have to focus on this. And as much as she is not focused on it, Donald Trump’s is not in a much bigger way. And that is the person that she’s running against.”
Just days ago, Ruhle argued that the VP didn’t have to answer tough policy questions because she wasn’t “running for perfect. She’s running against Trump.”
“We have two choices. And so there are some things you might not know her 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,” Ruhle said on Friday’s installment of “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
Ruhle later suggested that the idea of Harris sitting down for a tough interview that would extract specific policy proposals is as out of reach as “Nirvana.”
Fox News’ Alba Cuebas-Fantauzzi contributed to this report.
