Last month, Kamala Harris made the rounds of supportive liberal networks to promote her campaign book 107 Days. The title implied it was impossible for her to beat that allegedly despised dictator Donald Trump with so little time.
No one expected much of the interviewers, starting with ABC’s The View, which could have titled the interview “You Had Me at Hello.” They put a six-pack of suckups on the set. The “conservative” Alyssa Farah Griffin could only ask if Harris missed any warning signs.
The biggest event in that interview was co-host Sunny Hostin confessing to the Mom-ala that she felt she’d hurt her chances by asking an obvious question: Where do you differ from Joe Biden? Harris said she couldn’t think of anything.
That shouldn’t be a destructive question. It’s an obvious question, even if the answer was exploitable.
ABC’s Good Morning America was no better. Co-host Michael Strahan tiptoed in with Democrat concerns: “There's some Democrats who said that you don't take enough responsibility for the loss. How do you respond to that?”
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow gushed over Kamala as the “patron saint of I Told You So,” and let her subject compare Trump to a communist dictator. We won’t even get into her interviews with Don Lemon and Joy Reid.
All these Americans looked dreadful when the Kamala Harris book tour went international. British Broadcasting Corporation interviewer Laura Kuennsberg noticed Harris said “I’m not done,” suggesting another presidential run. She warned: “But when you look at the bookies' odds, they put you, as an outsider, even behind Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson.” Harris claimed she's never "listened to polls."
That seems obvious, since she dropped out of her first presidential campaign before the primaries even began.
Kuennsberg also went after Biden’s cognitive decline: “You write that President Biden didn’t raise his frailty with you, and you write that you didn’t really raise it with him. That’s extraordinary to read in your account.” Harris claimed she didn’t doubt his capacity to serve as president, but he lacked the capacity to run for re-election.
The BBC anchor was gobsmacked: “Isn't it a strange message to the public to say, you know, what you need to be tougher and more able to run a political campaign than actually to be the person behind the desk in the Oval Office?” Harris stuck to her line.
Then came Australia’s ABC. Interviewer Sarah Ferguson also pressed on the decline question: "Didn’t you also have a responsibility? You were one of the people in the room…. Didn't you have a responsibility as an American to step up and say something at that point?" Harris insisted: "I did not question Joe Biden's capacity to be president at all."
Ferguson blamed Biden: "Wasn't his refusal to recognize his own frailties the reason that you faced a nearly impossible task?" When Harris shifted to saying Trump was the real challenge, Ferguson called her out: "I want to interrupt you because that is a world-class pivot, but it is not the question that I asked you, which is about Joe Biden's failure to recognize his own frailties and what that did to you," Ferguson said. "The question is about Joe Biden. Are you still reluctant to criticize the former president?"
Harris answered: “In what regard, please?” Ferguson restated her thesis that Biden damaged her chances. Harris repeated: “He was not frail as President of the United States.”
This was about as accurate as comparing Trump to a communist dictator. It’s a colossal shame that American journalists can’t ask the questions that foreigners can.
