Harris says she won't ban fracking

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – Vice President Kamala Harris said she will not ban natural gas fracking, telling KDKA-TV that her position has not changed since joining the Biden ticket in 2020.

As a senator in 2019, Harris once said she would ban fracking, which she did the method of extracting the natural gas Homes and factories are heated in the Pittsburgh region.

The Trump campaign insists that is still Harris' view, and so KDKA-TV's Jon Delano, in her first television interview with a Pittsburgh station since announcing her presidential bid, repeated a campaign ad and asked her directly.

“The ad claims that if you are elected president, you will ban fracking and cost Pennsylvania over 300,000 jobs. “Have you changed your mind about fracking, and if so, why?” Delano asked.

“So let me start by saying that the ad you described is absolutely a mischaracterization that I think is intended to scare people,” Harris responded.

Harris said her view today is the same as it was in 2020, when she joined the Biden ticket. Biden said repeatedly during this campaign that he would not ban frackinga position Harris reiterated.

“I will not ban fracking. I didn't do that as vice president. In fact, I cast the deciding vote to open more fracking leases,” Harris said. “And my perspective on this is based on a number of things, including the fact that we don't need to ban fracking to do the work that we can do to invest in a clean energy economy as well.”

And the vice president took direct aim at campaign ads that claimed otherwise, calling them intentionally misleading.

“I will bring jobs back to rural communities. I'm going to make sure that we invest in the communities that have done the kind of work that you have in mind when you talk about Pittsburgh, when you talk about the larger aspect of Pennsylvania. And I will continue this work,” she said.

And despite clearly having a different opinion five years ago, the vice president insists she won't ban fracking.

“That’s my point of view, period. As president of the United States, I will not ban fracking,” she said.

Despite their strong and clear words on the issue, this is unlikely to stop the Trump campaign from insisting that their previous views on fracking are their real ones and leaving it to voters to decide who is telling the truth.