Tipsheet

We Have to Talk About Friday's Kamala Interview

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  September 16, 2024 10:01 AM

This is sure to be overtaken by the second failed assassination attempt against Donald Trump in the span of just three months, but it merits additional scrutiny, beyond Sarah's thorough coverage over the weekend.  On Friday evening, the first televised solo interview of Kamala Harris aired on a local ABC station in Philadelphia.  Yes, the first and only TV interview featuring just Kamala Harris as her party's presidential candidate thus far took place in mid-September, about a month-and-a-half after Joe Biden was driven out of the race.  And it was conducted by a local reporter.  It aired on a Friday evening, and it was heavily edited prior to being broadcast.  Harris was deeply rehearsed ahead of her debate performance last week, and she faced virtually no pointed follow-up questions in her only other televised interview, alongside her running mate.  The questions posed to her on Friday were not terribly complicated or tricky, but she struggled mightily to answer, leaning often on prepared platitudes she'd already deployed at the debate.  We learned almost nothing about Harris or her plans in the aforementioned CNN interview, or at that debate.  

We again learned nothing of substance in the Philly interview, but the exchange was nevertheless unintentionally instructive.  Overwhelmed, cringey, evasive Kamala Harris made a comeback, serving up patented word salads.  The reason her team is clearly avoiding interviews came, once again, into very clear focus.  Take the candidate's response to a simple question about lowering costs.  Harris' Senate tie-breaking votes as Vice President guaranteed the passage of trillions of dollars' worth of inflation-fueling spending, which have driven prices up 20 percent -- and her proposed "solutions" are regurgitations of ruinous, failed ideas about which she has offered no explanations.  She was offered a chance to explain how specifically she'd help bring down costs (setting aside her central role in contributing to the problem, and her frequent cheerleading for 'Bidenomics').  This is what she mustered:


But this is what local viewers actually saw.  Incredible:


Now look at this nothingness, after she's asked how she's different from Biden.  The real answer is that while she's co-piloted his unpopular presidency, she's dramatically to Biden's left on nearly everything.  She's currently pretending that's not the case -- again, without any explanation of her endless phony flip-flops on her many stated positions.  So we get this vacant, meaningless nonsense:


"For example" was doing a lot of work there.  She was asked to diagnose and speak to Trump's appeal to so many voters, and to offer a message to those who share his values, but may be open to voting another way.  Her reply was a mishmash of unresponsive lines she'd memorized for the debate.  There's a reason why these clips were eagerly shared by the Trump campaign:

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She looks tentative, nervous, and not at all confident in her ability to simply directly address questions put to her.  Her replies exude inadequacy.  And these are not exactly earth-shattering or hard-hitting questions.  I'd love to see her really challenged, for example, on this (content warning for language):


A Harris surrogate had absolutely nothing when confronted with the facts:


It should have been Harris answering for her own blatant, insulting falsehood on the debate stage (one of a significant list, none of which were fact-checked by the moderators on that very same network).  But how would she be able to explain her misstatements when she looks terrified fielding relative softballs?  No wonder Team Trump aggressively promoted the entire 11-minute interview on social media:


I'll leave you with the latest from Tim Walz, who falsely claims to espouse a "mind your own damn business" worldview, demanding that people...not mind their own damn business.  He wants people confronting strangers in grocery stores.  Actually, make our politics their damn business:


Oh, and here's his wife on the stump:


Trying to out-cringe Kamala Harris is a tall order, but Gwen Walz seemed up for the challenge.  Given how often Harris talks about 'turning the page' as the incumbent in the race, Republicans might make an ad out of it.  Harris asking the country to turn the page, but she is the current page.