Kamala Harris tells ABC's David Muir she would have 'certainly picked' Biden as her vice president
In her first interview since accepting the Democratic vice presidential nomination, Sen. Kamala Harris told ABC “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir that if she had been the presidential nominee, she would have picked Joe Biden as her running mate.
Speaking in their first joint interview since accepting the Democratic nomination, Biden and Harris talked about the highly anticipated vice-presidential selection and how the two became a ticket.
During the early stages of the campaign trail, while Harris was running her own presidential campaign, the California senator was often pressed about whether she would consider being the former vice president’s running mate. She once responded, Biden would make a great vice president.
“I think that Joe Biden would be a great running mate. As vice president he's proven that he knows how to do the job and there are certainly other candidates that would make for me a very viable and interesting vice president,” she told reporters in New Hampshire last year.
“Are you OK with how it turned out?” Muir asked during their first joint network interview.
“I absolutely am,” Harris said.
Muir and "Good Morning America" co-anchor Robin Roberts conducted joint interviews with Harris and Biden -- their first since accepting the Democratic nomination -- which was featured in a special edition of "20/20" called "The Ticket: The First Interview," which aired Sunday on ABC.
Harris told Muir Biden’s time as Vice President will shape how she does the job, if elected.
“Joe Biden is really probably, for me, a model of what makes for a great vice president, and the model for me, if we win, God willing we win this election,” Harris said. “What he did in, in-- as a partner to Barack Obama, what he did in terms of leading on very significant issues in support of Barack Obama, is really inspirational for me as a model of how I intend to do the job.”
“Would you have picked him?” Muir asked Harris.
“I would have certainly picked him,” Harris said. “We have a commitment to each other, so in many ways after he chose me, I chose him too.”
Harris was chosen by Biden in mid-August after a tightly contested selection process conducted by the Biden campaign.
"What strengths, qualities does Senator Harris have that you don’t?” “Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts asked Biden, after noting that he’d mentioned earlier in the campaign trail that he wanted to select a vice president that had strengths and qualities that he did not obtain.
“She has enormous strength,” Biden said. “I realized that I drove my staff crazy and everybody else and all of you by not letting anybody know who I picked,” he added jokingly.
When selecting Harris, Biden said, he asked that she be the last person in the room on every major decision as he was to President Barack Obama.
“And I know she'll have a perspective -- different in many cases than mine just by nature of who we are and our backgrounds and that's why I thought it was so important as well to have a woman as vice president,” Biden said.
"Did you ask for any commitments, any guarantees, before you agreed to be VP?” Roberts asked Harris.
"No, the thing about Joe I’m telling you he just says what’s on his mind, he doesn’t play games, he doesn’t equivocate. One of the first things he said is I want you to be the last person in the room and there was no negotiation at all. It was literally an immediate commitment. There’s so much to get done and I think that’s the kind of relationship and partnership that will be necessary to tackle the kind of challenges that we have right now,” Harris said.
