by R. Cort Kirkwood
Despite CNN’s best effort to protect vice president and Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris from herself, her first big interview left her looking like she was clueless.
Interviewer Dana Bash offered a menu of soft questions that Harris should easily have answered. But as is her wont, she offered the usual word salad. Running mate Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, didn’t help. He fumbled questions about past lies about his “war record” and drunk-driving arrest.
Not that CNN didn’t do its best to get the two through the interview with as little damage as possible. X users claimed that the interview was 41 minutes, and that the network edited the pre-taped chin-wag to 18 because Harris sounded, well, like she always sounds: not very smart.
If true, the network scrapped more than half the interview.
Our Administration, Trump’s Fault
Harris wasted no time in attacking former President Donald Trump, who hasn’t been running the country for the last four years.
Asked what she would do on Day 1 of her presidency, Harris promised, with no details, “to do what we can to support and strengthen the middle class.”
Then came the attack on Trump:
I think sadly in the last decade, we have had in the former president someone who has really been pushing an agenda and an environment that is about diminishing the character and the strength of who we are as Americans — really dividing our nation. And I think people are ready to turn the page on that.
As for Day 1, Harris spewed a cloud of ink like a squid.
“I’ve already laid out a number of proposals in that regard, which include what we’re gonna do to bring down the cost of everyday goods, what we’re gonna do to invest in America’s small businesses, what we’re gonna do to invest in families,” she said.
Bash then asked a surprisingly adversarial question, observing that one of Harris’ cultish campaign slogans is “we’re not going back.”
“But I wonder what you say to voters who do want to go back when it comes to the economy specifically because their groceries were less expensive, housing was more affordable when Donald Trump was president,” Bash rightly asked.
Harris blamed “mismanagement by Donald Trump” of the Covid-19 pandemic for massive price increases under Bidenomics. Trump, apparently — not the man in the White House — was responsible for the 8.3 percent inflation rate in 2022.
Harris touted her plan to stop price gouging, which Democrats say won’t become law, and promised a “tax credit of $25,000 for first-time home buyers” to lower housing prices.
Bash rightly asked why she and Biden haven’t executed those and other proposals during the more than three years of their administration. That was Trump’s fault, Harris said:
Well, first of all, we had to recover as an economy, and we have done that. I’m very proud of the work that we have done that has brought inflation down to less than 3%, the work that we have done to cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors. Donald Trump said he was gonna do a number of things, including allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. Never happened. We did it.
No to Fracking, Yes to Fracking
Bash also nailed her for U-turning on fracking. “There is no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,” Harris said in 2019 during her failed presidential primary campaign.
Not so today, Harris said:
I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020, that I would not ban fracking. As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking.
When Bash pressed her on the question, Harris said the same thing:
In 2020 I made very clear where I stand. We are in 2024, and I have not changed that position, nor will I going forward. I kept my word, and I will keep my word.
When Bash asked why Harris changed her mind, Harris delivered the word salad:
Well, let’s be clear. My values have not changed. I believe it is very important that we take seriously what we must do to guard against what is a clear crisis in terms of the climate. And to do that, we can do what we have accomplished thus far.
Trump Responsible for Immigration Invasion
Trump is also to blame for the Biden-Harris-invited illegal-alien invasion at the border.
“Why did the Biden-Harris administration wait three and a half years to implement sweeping asylum restrictions?” Bash asked.
Harris claimed that encounters at the southwest border have decreased since she and Biden focused on it. “And through bipartisan work, including some of the most conservative members of the United States Congress, a bill was crafted which we supported, which I support.”
But the evil Trump sabotaged that effort, she lied:
And Donald Trump got word of this bill that would’ve — that contributed to securing our border. And because he believes that it would not have helped him politically, he told his folks in Congress, “Don’t put it forward.” He killed the bill: a border security bill that would’ve put 1,500 more agents on the border. And let me tell you something. The Border Patrol endorsed the bill.
As Trump’s running mate, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, wrote in The American Conservative in February, fellow conservatives opposed the bill before Trump said anything about it.
Harris also said she doesn’t regret misleading the public about Biden’s obvious cognitive decline, although Bash didn’t use those words.
Walz Dodges
Bash pressed Walz on three major falsehoods: his claim that he went to war, his claim that he wasn’t drunk when cops arrested him for drunk driving in 1995, and his claim that he and his wife, Gwen, conceived their children using in vitro fertilization.
Walz confessed the first by saying he misspoke, then dodged the second and third:
Well, I’ve been very public. I think they can see — my students come out — former folks I’ve served with, and they — and they do, they vouch for me. I certainly own my mistakes when I make ’em. The one thing I’ll tell you is I wished in this country we wouldn’t have to do this. I spoke about our infertility issues ’cause it’s hell, and families know this. And I — I spoke about the treatments that were available to us that — that had those beautiful children there. That’s quite a contrast in folks that are trying to — to take those rights away from us.
Edited Interview?
Minutes after the interview aired at 9 p.m. EST, X user Paulie wrote that a “good friend” is a CNN managing editor, and that CNN had “41 minutes of tape.” But “Harris and her team objected to over half of the already taped interview.”
Harris forced the network to delete a question Bash asked, Paulie wrote. How, the CNN talker wanted to know, can Harris support the Green New Deal and fracking?
Wrote Paulie:
She didn’t have an answer for it except to say she will “get it done.”
The phrase does not appear in CNN’s transcript.