The mainstream media have buried Vice President Kamala Harris’s first solo interview in the eight weeks since she joined the presidential race, either failing to report it or claiming, falsely, that it was a great success.
Harris spoke to Philadelphia’s WPVI-TV, known as 6 ABC, and struggled to express a coherent thought as she rambled through five straightforward questions from reporter Brian Taff.
The Harris campaign trusted a local ABC affiliate after ABC News’ moderators sided with her during last week’s debate. Taff asked specific questions, but — perhaps given time constraints — did not follow up on Harris’s answers.
Asked for specific policies that would bring down costs and make life more affordable for Americans, for example, Harris talked about her supposedly middle-class upbringing, and how her neighbors cared about their lawns.
Several minutes into her answer, Harris eventually landed on a talking point about an “opportunity economy,” mentioning plans for a tax credit for small business owners and help for down payment for first-time home buyers.
Asked what made her different from President Joe Biden, Harris again struggled. She alluded to the fact that she is younger than Biden (“a new generation of leadership”) and repeated her point about the “opportunity economy.” The rest of her answer was incoherent.
The only time Harris gave a somewhat clear response, on gun control, it was contradictory: “We’re not taking anybody’s guns away,” she said, before saying that she supported an “assault weapons ban” that would do just that.
The interview reinforced fears that Harris cannot respond to unscripted questions, and suggested that her debate performance last week, which many viewers thought was strong, was the result of rehearsed answers. (Indeed, on many occasions during the debate, Harris simply evaded the question she was being asked, most notably the first question: “When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?”.)
But the mainstream media either failed to report Harris’s disastrous interview, or distorted what happened.
Deadline reported the interview under the headline: “No Mention Of Anyone Eating Pets, Kamala Harris Promises “New Generation Of Leadership” In First Solo TV Interview Since Becoming POTUS Candidate.” Reporter Dominic Patten wrote that Harris “stuck to her talking points” and “stayed focused on her pitches for the economy, giving working Americans a leg-up, gun ownership, and reducing crime.” (There was no discussion of reducing crime in the interview, and Patten ignored the fact that Harris largely evaded the question of making life more affordable.)
Newsweek published “key takeaways,” telling readers that Harris “gave specifics on her ‘opportunity economy’ plans,” when in fact Harris had avoided specifics, meandering through talking points, especially on her economic policies.
Axios.com gave a more straightforward writeup, but hid the fact that Harris could barely string a sentence together. It cleaned up one of her answers by changing the question Harris was asked. For example, reporter Sareen Habeshian wrote: “Asked about her plan for the economy, Harris pointed to her plans to provide a tax credit for starting a small business and give first-time homebuyers assistance on a down payment.” Harris was not asked about a general economic plan; she was asked for specifics about “bringing down prices and making life more affordable.”
The BBC also published a positive writeup that hid Harris’s poor performance, though it noted — unlike Axios — that when “Harris was asked how she would bring down prices for Americans,” i.e. not a general plan, she mentioned her small business and home ownership plans, and that the “price-tag for the plan and who might qualify are unclear.”
CNN, where Harris gave her first interview of any kind last month since joining the campaign in July, albeit seated alongside running mate Tim Walz, simply published the 6 ABC the interview without further commentary.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.