Senator-Elect Kamala Harris: I Will Resist President Trump

California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who was recently elected to take over outgoing Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer’s seat, said she would resist President-elect Donald Trump’s policies once he is in the White House.

During a post-election interview with the Sacramento Bee on Thursday, Harris expressed her intention to “fight” Trump on immigration, health care, the environment and crime.

She said she disagreed with Trump’s intention to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). However, she noted that she is “heartened by the fact that at the very least he recognizes that pre-existing conditions and the component about kids up to the age of 26, that they’ll be covered . . . But the population is obviously bigger than that so there’s going to be a need to fight.”

Asked to react to Trump’s statement on 60 Minutes that he wants to focus on potentially deporting immigrants with criminal records, Harris said “I am suspicious of that approach,” citing her own experience.

I have an experience with this kind of approach and what I have seen is when you say criminal, that’s a very broad term. It’s not a monolith. There’s a whole range of behaviors that can qualify as being called a crime. A DUI is very different from rape. And as a career prosecutor I have constantly and consistently seen that one of the best tools in the tool belt of a predator of an undocumented immigrant, be it rape, be it domestic violence, be it fraud, one of the best tools that the predator has is to look at the victim and tell the victim, ‘if you report this it is you who will be treated like a criminal.'”

One area Harris suggested to the Bee where she might be able to agree with President Trump is infrastructure, which she said “is a very importnat area” for her. S

he joked that many Los Angeles residents believe it’s “a human rights issue… So I would be very happy to work with President-elect Trump on infrastructure.”

The entire interview can be found here.

Follow Adelle Nazarian on Twitter and Periscope @AdelleNaz

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