Kamala Harris has finally sat through a post-Democratic nomination interview—albeit for a meagre 27 minutes “padded” with campaign footage, and with her running mate Tim Walz present as her “babysitter.”
The CNN interview, conducted by the channel’s veteran political reporter Dana Bash, was taped and edited earlier in the day Thursday, and aired Thursday night tagged “LIVE”—even though it clearly was not… live.
“The main reason,” said Reid J. Epstein in The New York Times, “CNN’s interview … turned out to be remarkable was that it was the first one she had done since President Biden bowed out and tapped her as his successor.” That’s hardly high praise.
Perhaps the most positive review came from Democratic Coalition co-founder Scott Dworkin who claimed on X that he had “heard” the Democratic Duo “crushed” the interview. That’s the same Dworkin who claimed that Joe Biden “won” against Donald Trump in that disastrous debate. In any case, “looks like the CNN/Kamala interview was a train wreck,” jibed former Trump aide Taylor Budowich.
Ben Shapiro of the Daily Wire added that “the bar for our politics has been set so low that Kamala not physically c******g herself during an interview is now considered a brilliant performance. But in reality, she’s a mess.”
In a particularly confusing moment, Harris stressed that “my values have not changed”—despite having admitted that her positions on major policy issues had—without explaining what exactly this meant.
For anyone remembering her record, that’s hardly an encouraging answer. In 2014, as California attorney general, Harris backed Proposition 47, a controversial law that reclassified certain crimes from felonies to misdemeanours—including the theft of items with a total value of less than $950. During the George Floyd riots in 2020, she encouraged contributions to the Minnesota Freedom Fund which bailed out violent protesters who had been arrested. Not to mention hydraulic fracturing—fracking; an oil and gas extraction method that has boosted production of hydrocarbons significantly—which she was against before she was for it.
Los Angeles Criminal defence lawyer Nicole Castronovo told Fox News:
She’s one of these people who’ve talked out of both sides of her mouth, and she’s going to have trouble with both the left and the right with the stances she’s taken over the years.
It’s no wonder, then, that NYT columnist Bret Stephens branded her performance as “vague” and “vacuous.”
As for the Democrats’ vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, he fared no better than Harris. When Bash asked if he agreed with the campaign’s explanation for him saying he had carried weapons in war—that he “misspoke”—Walz responded, “My record speaks for itself” and “my wife, the English teacher, told me my grammar isn’t always correct.” CNN’s Bash chose to not challenge Walz’s statements about his military rank, which have also been proven false, leading to accusations of “stolen valor.”
Commentators have poked fun at the fact that Harris did the interview with Walz by her side. “It’s clear that her own team and her own party think she needs a babysitter,” said Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, adding: “This isn’t even a tough interview. This is on CNN.”
A member of Harris’ team told Politico that “obviously she will do solo interviews too” over the course of the campaign. However, the Democrat’s almost total avoidance of journalistic scrutiny—prompting even Democratmore-friendly media organisations to warn that “being our joyful Momala is not going to win the election”—means this isn’t obvious at all.
Reading coverage of the interview this morning, Harris’ team may well decide to continue keeping the media at arm’s-length. Indeed, an anti-Harris commentator responded to the footage with a “guilty confession … The Kamala Harris campaign was RIGHT to hide her from the press. This interview is a TRAIN WRECK.”
