Election deniers damage U.S. reputation on the world stage, Harris says

Election deniers and elected officials who back rioters from the Jan. 6 insurrection are responsible for eroding the United States’ reputation on the world stage, Vice President Kamala Harris said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” set to air Sunday.

“Through the process of what we’ve been through, we’re starting to allow people to call into question our commitment to those principles,” Harris said. “And that’s a shame.”

The remark was in response to a question by host Chuck Todd about the message that internal threats to American democracy send to the outside world, part of a wide-ranging interview.

Attacks on democracy are “very dangerous, and I think it is very harmful. And it makes us weaker,” Harris said.

She recalled her time on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and said her colleagues on the committee were focused on national security threats in a nonpartisan way.

Threats to democracy from within the country should be approached in the same way — “as Americans, instead of through some partisan lens,” Harris said. But asked whether domestic threats now rival the danger of foreign terrorist threats, Harris said the two couldn’t be compared.