The Patriot Post® · CBS News Shows Why Harris Has Been Hidden Away
Talk about a softball. Indeed, it was a beach ball.
Kids, when you sit for that first job interview and your prospective employer asks you about your work history, you’ll almost certainly be asked if you’d have done anything differently during your time there.
Sure enough, as Kamala Harris continued her tour yesterday of unserious “media” interviews with Trump-hating pro-Harris cupcakes, “The View’s” Sunny Hostin asked her precisely that question: “Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?”
Harris, of course, has had difficulty separating herself from the man who made her the first DEI hire in American presidential politics: Joe Biden. Hostin undoubtedly saw this as an opportunity to tee up a differentiating response from Harris.
But no.
“Uh, there is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of—” she stumbled, “and I’ve been a part of, of, of most of the decisions that have had impact.”
Let that sink in. Not only did the self-anointed change candidate — the candidate who wants to turn the page on the past and chart a new way forward — refuse an opportunity to distance herself from one of the least popular presidents in American history, but she also attached herself at the hip to all of Biden’s failed policies, foreign and domestic.
Put another way: The American people, by a 28-61 margin, are overwhelmingly convinced that our nation is on the wrong track. Yet Kamala Harris wouldn’t do anything differently — not the wide-open borders and the 10 million (encountered) illegals, not the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, not the green light for Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, not the runaway money printing and the resulting inflation, not the coddling of the Jew-hating Left on college campuses all across the country, not the years-long deception of the American people regarding Biden’s cognitive decline, nothing. No regrets.
Speaking of foreign policy, Harris made another astounding claim when asked to name our most dangerous foreign adversary: “I think there’s an obvious one in mind, which is Iran. Iran has American blood on their hands.” The correct answer is China, but to call out Iran and mention “blood on their hands” is astounding, given the administration’s record with Iran and the blood on their hands in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Israel.
A subtle desperation has begun to creep into the Harris campaign. They can feel that the post-convention, post-debate wave of their candidate’s momentum has crested and that Donald Trump’s campaign — in the wake of a magnificent debate performance by his VP candidate, JD Vance — is resurgent. Indeed, for the first time in a month, Trump is ahead of Harris on the betting boards. Beyond that, his polling numbers are far stronger today against Harris than they were on the same day four years ago against Biden.
Given all this, the Harris campaign is making her more available to the media. Friendly media, but still. Earlier this week, she sat down with CBS News’s Bill Whitaker for what she no doubt thought was a safe interview with a friendly network. Not so much. Whitaker performed an act of journalism on Harris, and in doing so he reminded us all of just why the veep has refused to do even a single press conference since her selection as the Democrats’ nominee.
Maybe Harris thought Whitaker would go easy on her because he’s black. Oops. The “60 Minutes” correspondent asked her three times — three times — about whether it was a mistake to open the immigration floodgates, and she kept dodging.
“I’ve been covering the border for years, and so I know this is not a problem that started with your administration,” Whitaker said. “But there was an historic flood of undocumented immigrants coming across the border the first three years of your administration. As a matter of fact, arrivals quadrupled from the last year of President Trump. Was it a mistake to loosen the immigration policies as much as you did?”
Harris didn’t fare any better when he asked her about her economic plan or about our nation’s relationship with Israel and her relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Nor did she respond well to this haymaker from Whitaker:
They say that the reason so many voters don’t know you is that you have changed your position on so many things. You were against fracking, now you’re for it. You supported looser immigration policies, now you’re tightening them up. You were for Medicare for all, now you’re not. So many that people don’t truly know what you believe or what you stand for. And I know you’ve heard that.
Her non-responsive response? “In the last four years, I have been vice president of the United States. And I have been traveling our country. And I have been listening to folks and seeking what is possible in terms of common ground. I believe in building consensus. We are a diverse people. Geographically, regionally, in terms of where we are in our backgrounds.”
What we have here is an example of “The Taranto Effect,” coined by The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto to explain how the Leftmedia’s continued coddling of a Democrat candidate leaves her ill-prepared for the moments when she’ll have to answer difficult questions. What we’re left with is a sense that Kamala Harris isn’t in charge, that she isn’t fit for this high office.
As if to further emphasize this point, CBS engaged in some sleazy sleight-of-hand in its Harris interview, all to protect her from a word salad of a response. As Fox News reports: “CBS aired two different answers to the same question in its ‘60 Minutes’ interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, replacing a clip from the Democratic nominee that aired on ‘Face the Nation’ Sunday when the interview package aired in a primetime special on Monday.”
Team Trump has since demanded that CBS release the entire unedited transcript of the interview. Fat chance of that.
All in all, it was a really bad look, a cringeworthy look, for Kamala Harris. And it couldn’t have come at a better time for Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
(Updated)