CNN anchor Kasie Hunt stifled a laugh as she interrupted campaign spokesman Ian Sams when he said Vice President Kamala Harris has a “very different” economic plan, derisively asking him to explain “what else on the list is so different?”
VP Harris rolled out several economic policy proposals during a rally in New Hampshire Wednesday, including an increase in the tax on capital gains to 28 percent — much lower than the rate President Joe Biden has proposed.
Sams — who recently moved to the Harris campaign from the White House Counsel’s office — was a guest on Thursday morning’s edition of CNN This Morning, during which Hunt repeatedly pressed him for differences between the VP and President Biden.
And while Sams was answering an unrelated question about polling, Hunt cut in to mock Sams for calling the Harris plan “very different”:
IAN SAMS: You’ll see places where there are distinctions because she’s her own candidate.
KASIE HUNT: Ian, how do you explain why working class Americans, Americans without college degrees, a lot of white working class Americans, but also working class Americans of color, have decided that the Democratic Party isn’t the party for them?
IAN SAMS: Well, look, I think the pundits can kind of do the demographic analysis. And I think what we do as a campaign and what the vice president does as a candidate is take her message to the voters. I think that she has to be out there, and she is out there explaining to people what she’s bringing to the table. She wants to help lower people’s grocery–
KASIE HUNT: She’s been part of the Biden administration, and she has been part of the Democratic. Democrats have been control of the country for the last three, going on four years. And you are still seeing this in the polling.
I mean these working-class voters are telling us right now that more of them are with Donald Trump than Kamala Harris. Why? What is it about what you guys have been doing for the last three-plus years that explains that?
IAN SAMS: Well, I think, again, we’re trying to talk to the voters and explain this message. We’ve got 60 days until the election. You know, we don’t have time to sit around and think about why over the last few years, certain things may have happened or may not have happened.
We’ve got to go win an election. And the vice president’s doing that by talking about her economic vision. And it’s really different. It’s a new way forward, not only for the Democratic Party, but for the country.
KASIE HUNT: It’s really different!
IAN SAMS: (CROSSTALK).
KASIE HUNT: Okay. Can you can you tell me what is really different? I got the capital gains rate, but what else on the list makes it really different from what was going on the past few years?
IAN SAMS: Sure. She wants to take into effect the first national law to take on corporate price gouging.
She’s talking about holding bad corporate actors accountable for their role in taking up prices on people at the grocery store, at the gas pump all across this country.
There are there are distinctions here in this candidate’s message that she is sharing with the country every single day. And she’s out there on the trail doing it while Donald Trump’s talking about trickle-down economics.
And so, you know, I understand the pundit class wants to sit around and maybe have these conversations. But at the end of the day, this is a campaign and we’re running to win. And she’s running to win.
And she’s talking about the economy almost every single day on the campaign trail and her plans to lower costs, whether it’s in housing or groceries, her plans to give small businesses the tax incentives they need to start and the resources they need just get off the ground.
A tax cut for middle-class families and working parents.
You know, these are the things that she’s talking about that I think resonate with voters in their lives. I think we should have some more coverage and conversation about those actual substantive plans to help make sure that the country does hear more about the economic vision she’s offering, in contrast with Donald Trump’s trickle-down.
KASIE HUNT: All right, fair enough.
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