CNN anchor Anderson Cooper took Vice President Kamala Harris to task at the network’s town hall Wednesday over the Biden administration’s record on illegal immigration and her personal stance on a border wall. However, some commentators were skeptical of her performance, saying she was “much more focused on Donald Trump” than her own politics.

Cooper asked Harris to declare her support for a bipartisan immigration deal that included $650 million in spending on a border wall — even though she has previously “criticized the wall more than 50 times” and called a wall “stupid,” “useless.” “ and “medieval” had called the vanity project.

Harris responded: “So let’s talk about Donald Trump and this border wall. Remember Donald Trump saying Mexico would pay for it? Come on, they didn’t. How much of this wall did he build? I think the last number I saw is about 2 percent. And when it came time for him to take a photo, do you know where he took it? In the part of the wall that President Obama built.

Harris has taken a harder line on immigration as an exclusive poll Newsweek from Redfield & Wilton Strategies showed that 53 percent of Democratic-leaning voters support a stronger approach to the issue.

Philip van Scheltinga of Redfield & Wilton Strategies said Newsweek: “If even Democratic voters are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the situation as it has developed, then it is time for the Democratic Party to reconsider its position.”

Harris also used her CNN appearance to call former President Donald Trump a fascist, echoing comments made by John Kelly, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, who said Trump praised Adolf Hitler’s generals. The former president’s team strongly denies the accusation. The Republican candidate hit back at Truth Social, writing that Harris is “a threat to democracy” and “unfit to be president of the United States.”

According to fact-checking website PolitiFact, the Trump administration built 52 miles of new primary border wall and 406 miles of secondary border barriers to support existing defenses. In August, Trump posed in front of a portion of the border wall in Montezuma Pass, Arizona, built under the Obama administration. The Washington Post reported.

Cooper asked Harris why she promised to reintroduce the bipartisan border bill if she won in November, given her past opposition to a border wall. The Democratic candidate responded: “I’m not afraid of good ideas wherever they arise.”

The CNN anchor then said, “So you don’t think it’s stupid anymore?” Harris responded, referring to Trump, “I think what he did and how he did it didn’t make a lot of sense because he didn’t actually has done a lot.”

After the debate, there was some criticism of Harris’ performance. CNN anchor Jake Tapper said she was “much more focused on Donald Trump … than a lot of the details of what she was going to do.”

Regarding swing voters, CNN journalist Dana Bash added: “If her goal was to close the deal, (undecided voters) aren’t sure she did that.”

On X, Washington Post Columnist Shadi Hamid said: “At the CNN town hall, Kamala Harris appears completely unable to answer questions about US complicity in the destruction of Gaza. She says too many civilians have been killed, but refuses to say anything about America’s role in supplying the weapons. “That’s killing her.”

The author Lisa Guerrero on “

Newsweek contacted the Harris and Trump campaigns via email outside of regular office hours on Thursday for comment.

The Trump War Room, an account associated with Trump’s presidential campaign, posted a clip of the exchange on X, formerly Twitter, where it received more than 250,000 views.

Another clip from the town hall was also posted on the account and was viewed more than 220,000 times. In the video, Cooper asked Harris about “record border crossings” in 2022 and 2023, before President Joe Biden issued an executive order in June 2024 limiting the number of asylum seekers allowed across the U.S.-Mexico border.

The host asked why the administration had not issued such an order in recent years. Harris responded: “Because we worked with Congress and hoped that we could actually solve the problem in the long term, not the short term.”

According to the latest analysis from polling portal 538, the election is still too close as Trump has a 51 percent chance of winning on November 5, while Harris has a 49 percent chance.

Update 10/24/2024 10:36 a.m. ET: This story has been updated with additional contextual information.