Vice President Kamala Harris interview: Democratic nominee vows to put Republican in Cabinet in CNN exclusive

The highly anticipated first interview with Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, is just hours away.

Harris and Walz have been under increased scrutiny from former President and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance of Ohio, over their lack of exposure to the press.

In an excerpt released ahead of the 11am AEST broadcast on CNN, Harris pledged to put a Republican in her Cabinet if elected in the November 5 election.

“I have spent my career inviting diversity of opinion,” the vice president said in an interview with CNN anchor Dana Bash.

“I think it’s important to have people at the table when some of the most important decisions are being made that have different views, different experiences,” Harris said.

“And I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my Cabinet who was a Republican.”

Harris, in her first sit-down interview since replacing Biden atop the Democratic ticket more than a month earlier, also defended the apparent policy shifts to the centre she has made since her 2019 run for president.

“I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is, my values have not changed,” Harris told Bash, singling out her values on border security and climate change.

The interview took place at Kim’s Cafe in Savannah, Georgia, earlier Thursday.

Bash in the clip had asked Harris, “How should voters look at some of the changes that you’ve made, that you’ve explained some of here, in your policy?”

The vice president picked two hot-button issues to illustrate her point.

“You mentioned the Green New Deal,” Harris said. “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,” she said.

“As an example, that value has not changed.”

Harris went on, “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,” she said. “My values have not changed.”

The Nightly will be reporting on the exclusive interview live. Download The Nightly app to be kept up to date with the biggest moments from the first interview.

- With CNBC