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--:-- John Bickley: Amid growing pressure after more than a month of campaigning, Kamala Harris finally sits down for an interview, joined by her VP pick, Tim Walz. What would you do on day one in the White House? Well, there are a number of things. When I look at the aspirations, the goals, the ambitions of the American people, I think that people are ready for a new way forward. What would you do day one?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Meanwhile, Donald Trump holds a town hall in a key battleground state. I'm trying to be nice here. They say, be nice, sir, be nice. You know, it's hard to be nice when somebody is destroying your country and wants to destroy your country.
--:-- John Bickley: I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Friday, August 30th, and this is Morning Wire. We sit down with legendary actor John Voight to discuss his new film on one of America's most beloved presidents, Ronald Reagan. The job of the presidency is a huge job. It takes a certain kind of person to be able to deal with it gracefully, and he certainly did.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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--:-- John Bickley: Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walls sat down for a pre-taped interview on Thursday, nearly 40 days after being installed atop the Democratic ticket. Here with the details is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips, a Cabot. So a highly anticipated interview, to say the least. Tell us what we heard yesterday from the vice president.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, and highly anticipated for good reason. We've talked about it before, but since becoming the presumptive nominee, Kamala Harris has not sat down for a single interview with the press. So this was really the first time we've seen her speak to the American people without the aid of a teleprompter. But it is worth noting, she wasn't alone. Harris was joined by her running mate Tim Walls, and the interview also was not aired live. It was pre-taped. All of that only added fuel to accusations that the Harris campaign is doing everything possible to hide their candidate from the press.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, as for the interview itself, the moment that got the most attention came when Harris was asked about her apparent flip-flops on a number of far-left policy positions. Remember, The VP for years has opposed a border wall and funding for ICE while supporting a fracking ban, Medicare for all, mandatory gun buybacks and EV mandates. Her campaign now says that she has reversed her position on all of those policies.
--:-- Kamala Harris: How should voters look at some of the changes that you made in your policy And should they feel comfortable and confident that what you saying now is going to be your policy moving forward?
--:-- Kamala Harris: Dan, I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed. I have always believed and I have worked on it that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter. to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time. We did that with the Inflation Reduction Act. We have set goals for the United States of America and, by extension, the globe, around when we should meet certain standards for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, as an example.
--:-- Kamala Harris: That value has not changed. My value around what we need to do to secure our border, that value has not changed. I spent two terms as the attorney general of California prosecuting transnational criminal organizations, violations of American laws regarding the passage, illegal passage of guns, drugs and human beings across our border. My values have not changed.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Republicans were quick to make note of those words, quote, my values have not changed. They say Harris still supports all of those far left things she talked about in the past, even if she's announcing them now. The Trump campaign posted a statement saying, quote, Kamala Harris confirmed she's still her radical left self.
--:-- Kamala Harris: In 2019, I believe at a town hall, you said you were asked, would you commit to implementing a federal ban on fracking on your first day in office? And you said there's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking. So, yes. So it changed in that campaign? In 2020, I made very clear where I stand. We are in 2024, and I've not changed that position, nor will I going forward. I kept my word, and I will keep my word.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Later on, Harris was asked about her past defense of President Biden. Remember, up until the moment he dropped out, she was repeating the claim that he was totally fit for office. You were a very staunch defender of President Biden's capacity to serve another four years. Right after the debate, you insisted that President Biden is extraordinarily strong.
--:-- Kamala Harris: Given where we are now, do you have any regrets about what you told the American people? No, not at all. I have served with President Biden for almost four years now, and I'll tell you, it's one of the greatest honors of my career, truly. He has the intelligence, the commitment and the judgment and disposition that I think the American people rightly deserve in their president.
--:-- Dana Bash: The steps that you're talking about now, why haven't you done them already? Well, first of all, we had to recover as an economy, and we have done that. I'm very proud of the work that we have done that has brought inflation down to less than 3%.
--:-- Tim Walz: Have a listen You said that you carried weapons in war but you have never deployed actually in a war zone A campaign official said that you misspoke. Did you? Well, first of all, I'm incredibly proud. I've done 24 years of wearing the uniform of this country. My record speaks for itself, but I think people are coming yet to know me. I speak like they do. I speak candidly. I wear my emotions on my sleeves. And in this case, this was after a shooting, the ideas of carrying these weapons of war. And my wife, the English, she told my grammar is not always correct.
--:-- Donald Trump: Why isn't it live? It's not a live interview. It's an interview that's going to be taped and then edited and then put out. So that's not even an interview. Then she's doing it with her vice president sitting there. So she's not very smart. When they ask her a question that she can't answer, she'll just look at him. You answer it.
--:-- Donald Trump: I have the safest border in the history of our country. They have the most unsafe border in the history of the world. All over the world, they're taking their criminals and they're dumping them into the United States. Kamala, that's Kamala, is allowing it to happen. And they actually want to make them citizens and they want to give them your social security.
--:-- Megan Basham: A new film on the life of Ronald Reagan hits theaters this weekend. Starring Dennis Quaid and Jon Voight, it reexamines the 40th president's legacy in world politics. Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham is here now with more about the new biopic, Reagan. So Megan, presidential biopics could be a genre all their own. We've seen movies about JFK, Nixon, George W. Bush, others. And yet, despite his historical importance, this is actually the first major film we've seen about Reagan. What does it focus on?
--:-- Jon Voight: So it gives us a brief overview of Reagan's life, but the aspect it really zeros in on is his lifelong battle against communism. So we see him at church as a young boy hearing the testimony of a Soviet refugee and how that impacted his later outlook. And then the film follows his years as the president of the Screen Actors Guild at the height of communist infiltration into Hollywood And we see how that informed his later foreign policy when it came to Gorbachev and the Soviet Union So this story is told through the eyes of a former KGB spy who is played by John Voight. And he's narrating Reagan's life as he explains to a young Russian agent why Reagan became the leader to win the Cold War.
--:-- Jon Voight: Voight told me that showing the Soviets recognition that Reagan would be a formidable ideological opponent was really the key theme in this film. It's an interesting way to do it because the people who were most interested in his rise in every corner of his career were the Soviets because they were looking for the dangers that might appear to them from people across the globe. And they found talented people who were politically gifted and who also had an understanding of the world and made a decision against communism, which was him. So they knew he was an enemy in some way, philosophically, and they saw him coming. So they were very attentive on everything.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, to piggyback off of Voight's point there, the Washington Post actually put out a fairly negative review. And one of its core critiques was that the film didn't explain why Reagan opposed communism. Well, I think maybe that reviewer might have overlooked a scene where Reagan hears an escapee from communist Russia describing the suffering and religious persecution that he lived under.
--:-- Jon Voight: But I did ask Voight about some reviews that are failing to see why communism was a threat. And he said that it illustrates the media's longtime failure to give Reagan his due. The KGB had a menu to try to destroy us from the inside by taking over different things in our society. And they listed that menu in a book. In 1958, a former FBI agent wrote a book called The Naked Communists. And in that book, he shows you what's going to go on. And they took four passages from that book and put it in the congressional record. So they knew that the communists were looking to take over our universities, take God out of the schools, create disruption by dividing us by race, by gender, and by age, and seeking to infiltrate both political parties and Hollywood.
--:-- Jon Voight: Well, it's all taken place, hasn't it? And so it's resembling the communist line. The guy at the Washington Post, he doesn't know he's representing those Confused, you know what I mean? He's confused. Why don't they talk about the, why are they against communism? Oh, okay. Anyway, it's amusing, but it's concerning. Voigt went on to say that this lack of historical understanding has dangerous implications for our current elections.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, just 10 years ago, the word socialism was political poison. Now it's a fashionable term with young people. Pretty disturbing if you studied history.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for reporting. Anytime. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more news you need to know.
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