I’ve seen many clips of last night’s interview on Fox News with Kamala Harris, read excerpts and reactions, but haven’t been able to bring myself to watch the entire thing. I’m sure Harris’ fans have good things to say about her performance: she’s so feisty and brave, and that sort of thing. And those who have no intention of ever voting for her say it was a train wreck, which I think it was. More to the point, of course, is what that tiny but oh-so-important group of undecideds in the middle might think, if they’re even paying attention. From what I’ve read and seen, though, I can’t imagine it won many of those people over.
Bret Baier seemed surprisingly tough and also well-prepared. The critique from the left was, predictably, He was so mean he interrupted her! And even, from some, How dare a white man do that to a black woman! Those who say those things don’t seem to understand that you can’t claim to be strong and not be able to take challenging question and/or interruptions. But then again, Kamala Harris is accustomed to dealing with an obsequious press.
One thing I can say for Harris, however: she had a game plan and she stuck with it. The game plan was and is rather simple: don’t get pinned down in any actual answers except Trump BAD! Over and over and over.
There were some extraordinary exchanges. For example:
BAIER: Your campaign slogan is a new way forward and it’s time to turn the page. You’ve been vice president for three and a half years. So what, are you turning the page from.
HARRIS: Well, first of all, turning the page from the last decade in which we have been burdened with the kind of rhetoric coming from Donald Trump that has been designed and implemented to divide our country and have Americans literally point fingers at each other. Rhetoric and an approach to leadership that suggests that the strength of a leader is based on who you beat down instead of what we all know the strength of leadership is based on who you lift up. The strength of an American president, which is one who understands that the vast majority of us have more in common than what separates us.
BAIER: More 70% of people…
HARRIS: That is about turning the page on rhetoric that people are frankly exhausted…
BAIER: …more than 70% of people tell pollsters the country is on the wrong track, they say the country is on the wrong track. If it’s on the wrong track, that track follows three and a half years of you being vice president and President Biden being president. That is what they’re saying. 79% of them. Why are they saying that? If you’re turning the page, you’ve been in office for three and a half years.
HARRIS: And Donald Trump has been running for office…
BAIER: But you’ve been the person in the office. Madam Vice President…
HARRIS: …both know what I’m talking about. You and I both know what I’m talking about.
BAIER: I actually don’t. What are you talking about?
Well he might ask. What she’s talking about is the only thing she feels comfortable talking about, which is that Trump is evil. Trumpety Trump Trump Trumpa-dump. Meanwhile, of course, as she goes on and on about the awfulness of Trump, she seems not to notice that it is she who thinks her own “strength as a leader is based on beating down Trump,” – or contnually attempting to do so.
Her next statement to Baier was this:
HARRIS: What I’m talking about is that over the last decade, people have…but listen, over the last decade, it is clear to me and certainly the Republicans who are on stage with me. The former chief of staff to the president, Donald Trump, former defense secretaries, national security advisor, and his vice president, one that he is unfit to serve…that he is unstable, that he is dangerous, and that people are exhausted with someone who professes to be a leader who spends full time demeaning and engaging in personal grievances and it being about him.
There’s that irony again: does she not understand that she has become the “someone who professes to be a leader who spends full time demeaning and engaging in personal grievances and it being about Trump”? Does she not even hear herself?
And then:
BAIER: Your campaign slogan is A New Way Forward and It’s Time To Turn The Page. You’ve been Vice President for 3.5 years. What are you turning the page from?
HARRIS: The last decade of Donald Trump.
Decade? He’s been in power for a decade? Who knew? He started in 2014? He’s been in power during the entire Biden/Harris administration? If he’s been so powerful for so very long, including during the nearly four years that Harris has been VP, why would he disappear if she were to be elected?
As time goes on and I hear more from Harris, I become more worried about what kind of president she actually would be if, heaven forbid, she won the election. Someone on some comment thread wrote, “She makes Hillary Clinton look like Dinah Shore.” And I have to add that she makes Biden look competent. Even in his addled state, he can draw on decades and decades of maneuvering in the political arena. The guy was never especially smart, but he had something on the ball – some sort of wily ability. I don’t know what Kamala has, and I don’t think she knows either, except identity politics and the demonization of Donald Trump. I certainly hope it won’t be enough to get her into the White House.
Here are two videos made after the interview. The first is from Baier:
The second is Ben Shapiro’s reaction: