The shameless and breathtaking Kamala Harris political rebrand entails three core components: (1) Abandoning and ignoring a wide array of her on-the-record stances, often without explanation, (2) pretending that the Biden-Harris administration isn't currently happening, while framing the incumbent as the change agent and challenger, and (3) constant, slavish, scrutiny-free media coverage. All three have been in full swing over the last month-plus. We'll return to item one below, but look at this take from a CNN reporter, gushing over Harris' acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week. As a friendly reminder, Harris is the incumbent. Her administration is in office right now, having held power for the past four years. Her political party has controlled the executive branch for 12 of the last 16 years.
And yet:
Harris's speech in one sentence: America, you don't have to live like this anymore.
— Greg Krieg (@GregJKrieg) August 23, 2024
Just look at them go:
This is on the White House webpage right now, Sam: https://t.co/BhzzgrQel7 pic.twitter.com/YzQXwJJ76Y
— RBe (@RBPundit) August 23, 2024
As is so often the case, much of the 'news' media is on the exact same page as the Democrats:
An odd thing to tweet about someone who won’t do an interview and has renounced all her past positions without explanation. https://t.co/n8hQnzB8jv
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) August 25, 2024
But hey, at least she's taking questions. Like, um, these:
Recommended
REPORTER: "What's next?"
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) August 23, 2024
KAMALA: "Walk up those stairs."
(It has been 33 days since Kamala was installed as the presumptive nominee, but she still hasn't done a single formal interview or press conference) pic.twitter.com/L4Td4DOn3q
We happened to chat with @VP Harris, Mr Emhoff, Gov and Mrs Walz briefly as they left the United Center tonight. pic.twitter.com/5S2nWsHvbE
— Kelly O'Donnell (@KellyO) August 23, 2024
Harris, under the watchful protection of journalists, is continuing her makeover with a huge advertising blitz. Here she is marketing herself as something other than the radical ideologue and failed incumbent that she is:
“We’ve been in charge for four years. You’re not happy. Prices are up, the economy is slowing, new wars have started, and ten million illegal border crossings have occurred. Ignore all that. Let’s march forward and do more of the same—focused on the future.” 🫶 https://t.co/aqMt2sN0m0
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) August 24, 2024
In another commercial, the disastrous Border Czar who has presided over ten million illegal crossings actually tries to remake herself as an enforcement-minded leader. This is someone who has failed to even meet with top Border Patrol leaders during her active time in office. Observers made an obvious, telling catch:
🚨 Not only is Kamala featuring border wall in her campaign ad, it appears that she’s featuring *Trump-era* additions to the border wall. The campaign footage (left image) matches VOA footage (right image) identified as Sasabe, Arizona. CBP website shows the wall in Sasabe was… https://t.co/xyXYEHcEAd pic.twitter.com/44Dmnbgoih
— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) August 24, 2024
She's literally advertising a Trump border wall that she's adamantly opposed at every turn. Again, it's hard to fully capture the shameless nature of this propaganda push. Finally, it's unclear why Harris even needs ads when journos are willing to carry her water so dutifully and obsequiously, even as she stiff-arms them for interviews (she has done a grand total of zero since Joe Biden dropped out of the race more than a month ago). Incredible:
Cotton is 100% right here and it's really weird that reporters are pushing campaign spin on behalf of Harris while she refuses to sit down for interviews and actually answer questions about her views on these very issues. https://t.co/jnDdP6faLr
— AG (@AGHamilton29) August 25, 2024
Indeed:
Tom Cotton defeats media misinformation, the latest in an ongoing series https://t.co/aGmGHES4MA pic.twitter.com/3Fo6RHiX78
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) August 25, 2024
"She has not said that" is absolutely correct from Cotton, who is excellent in this exchange. Harris has "changed" a bunch of her outwardly-stated extremist positions through terse emails from aides to journalists. She has announced none of it herself, and explained none of it. Eliminating private health insurance for nearly 200 million Americans was a centerpiece of her last presidential campaign, in which she was free to build her governing vision from the ground up -- not inherit a record from her own Biden-Harris misadventures. The 2020 cycle positions are her real positions. If she wants to feign that those are no longer her real positions, she can at least come out and say so in her own words, and offer an explanation. She's instead stonewalled all substantive questions and interviews for weeks on end, yet a senior ABC anchor (this network is hossting the September 10 presidential debate, incidentally) is eagerly regurgitating her lazy, unfounded spin in sparring with truth-telling Republican critics.
I'll leave you with this. Even amid the torrid media love affair with Barack Obama, they at least offered some perfunctory coverage of stories like this. Similar revelations are not solely being explored by right-leaning media, and will likely be relegated to that information ghetto, if the media class has anything to do with it:
NEW: Kamala Harris’s longtime pastor blamed America for 9/11 at a memorial service days after the attack
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) August 23, 2024
She tapped him to give the closing prayer after her acceptance speech last night
Fittingly, the pastor recently defended Obama pastor Jeremiah Wright https://t.co/L11hv9DYXt