Bash, Dana (1971- )

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    JD Vance Stands By False Pet-Eating Claims Roiling Ohio City

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    Senator JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, doubled down Sunday on the false claims that he and former President Donald J. Trump have spread suggesting Haitian migrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, which has received numerous bomb threats in the days since the claims surfaced.Mr. Vance said on CNN that the claims, which have been debunked by city officials in Springfield, had come from “firsthand accounts from my constituents,” and attacked the interviewer, Dana Bash, for fact-checking him, calling her a “Democratic propagandist” for connecting his and Mr. Trump’s words to the bomb threats.“I’ve been trying to talk about the problems in Springfield for months,” he said in the interview. He went on: “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”When Ms. Bash noted he had said “creating,” Mr. Vance replied, “I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it.”The false claims about the immigrants in Springfield have exploded since Mr. Vance became the first prominent national figure to promote them last week, repeating them on social media. The Trump campaign quickly amplified them, and Mr. Vance subsequently acknowledged that “it’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”But Mr. Trump repeated the claims to an audience of tens of millions of people during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday.During the interview, Ms. Bash noted that Springfield city officials had asked national figures like Mr. Vance and Mr. Trump to stop demonizing the migrants, who are mostly in the country legally under a temporary authorization program for people whose homelands are in crisis. “All these federal politicians that have negatively spun our city, they need to know they’re hurting our city, and it was their words that did it,” the mayor, Rob Rue, told WSYX, a local news station in Ohio.Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, a Republican, said in an interview on ABC News on Sunday morning that the claim that migrants were eating pets was “a piece of garbage that was simply not true.” He said that while there were some “challenges” involved in accommodating thousands of migrants, they had benefited Springfield economically. More

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      Harris Says She Has ‘No Regrets’ About Defending Biden’s Capabilities

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      Vice President Kamala Harris said on Thursday that she did not regret defending President Biden against claims that he had declined mentally, saying that she believes he has the “intelligence, the commitment and the judgment and disposition” Americans expect from their president.“No, not at all. Not at all,” the vice president said when asked if she regretted saying Mr. Biden was “extraordinarily strong” in the moments following the disastrous debate in June that led him to abandon his bid for re-election a month later.“He is so smart and loyal to the American people,” she said.In her first prime-time interview since Mr. Biden stepped aside and she became the new face of the Democratic Party, Ms. Harris continued to embrace the president and the record she has been a part of for almost four years. She told CNN’s Dana Bash that the administration’s efforts to help the economy recover after the pandemic and its push to secure the border are part of a record worth running on.But she talked about Mr. Biden mostly in the past tense — fondly, but with a kind of nostalgia that made it clear that he no longer represents the future of the country that she hopes to be leading in January.The challenge for her campaign over the next 67 days, top advisers say, is tricky: She must forge her own political identity separate from the president, who was pushed out amid voter concerns about his age and capacity to serve. But she can’t afford to break from his accomplishments, which remain popular, or to disrespect Mr. Biden, who remains a beloved figure among many in the party.“History is going to show,” she said, “not only has Joe Biden led an administration that has achieved those extraordinary successes, but the character of the man is one that he has been in his life and career, including as a president, quite selfless and puts the American people first.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Dana Bash Handled Past Interviews With Kamala Harris

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      Vice President Kamala Harris’s interview on Thursday with Dana Bash of CNN is the first major unscripted moment of her young presidential campaign. But it isn’t her first encounter with Ms. Bash.The CNN political anchor has interviewed Ms. Harris on three occasions in the past few years. In those past meetings, Ms. Bash was a firm-but-fair interlocutor: sometimes granting Ms. Harris time to meander through lengthy answers, and sometimes pressing her, repeatedly, when the vice president equivocated on tough issues.It was Ms. Bash, in 2022, who elicited Ms. Harris’s memorably odd description of herself as “the daughter of a woman, and a granddaughter of a woman.” (The anchor was asking about the vice president’s reaction to the Supreme Court opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade.)In the same interview, Ms. Bash pushed Ms. Harris on the Biden administration’s plans to secure abortion rights in the wake of the ruling. The vice president declined to give a full-throated endorsement of the strategies floated by Ms. Bash, like challenging state laws or an executive action.“But what do you say to Democratic voters who argue, ‘Wait a minute, we worked really hard to elect a Democratic president and vice president, a Democratic-led House, a Democratic-led Senate. Do it now,’” Ms. Bash asked.“But do what now?” Ms. Harris replied.A 2021 interview at the White House, conducted at a distance because of pandemic protocols, appeared less tense. Ms. Bash asked Ms. Harris about being the first Black and Indian person to serve as vice president — “How is that bringing itself to bear in the White House?” — and seemed to agree with Ms. Harris’s contention that Congress should act to restrict certain gun rights.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Harris Defends Ideological Shift to Center in CNN Interview

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      In her first television interview as the Democratic nominee for president, Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday defended her ideological shift to the political center, saying she would appoint a Republican to her cabinet but promising “my values have not changed.”She also curtly rejected former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claim that she recently “became” Black, according to partial excerpts released by CNN. The full interview will air at 9 p.m. Eastern time on CNN.Ms. Harris, taking questions Thursday afternoon from the CNN anchor Dana Bash in Savannah, Ga., sought to stake out political ground that would appeal to swing voters even as she assured progressive supporters she was still with them.“The most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is: My values have not changed,” Ms. Harris said, adding that her past support for the so-called Green New Deal was reflected in the passage of a sweeping climate bill that Mr. Biden signed in 2022.Ms. Harris told Ms. Bash that it was “important to find a common place of understanding of where we can actually solve problems,” according to CNN.Appointing a nominally bipartisan cabinet would be a return to tradition after eight years of more partisan White Houses. No Republicans are serving in President Biden’s cabinet. But President Barack Obama had a Republican secretary of transportation and two Republican secretaries of defense. President George W. Bush had a Democratic transportation secretary, and before that, President Bill Clinton had a Republican defense secretary.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More