On Tuesday and Thursday nights, liberal MSNBC hosts Ari Melber and Lawrence O’Donnell lobbed softballs at Senator and possible 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (Calif.) on issues ranging from DACA to the Russia investigation to single-payer health care.
Melber dedicated extensive portions on Thursday of his show The Beat to the Harris interview that began with a segment about her bipartisan criminal justice reform push with Republican Senator Rand Paul (Ky.). After that, however, the gushiness was flowing.
In reference to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s confirmation hearing, Melber swooned:
MELBER: Sessions famously said you were making him nervous when you questioned him. Are you questioning people like a prosecutor or like a senator?
HARRIS [LAUGHING]: Both. Both. I mean, listen, I am a prosecutor in my core and part of that is it's about the truth seeking mission. What's the truth? Let's find out what happened. Let's get into the facts.
Yuck. He then moved to questions about the Trump-Russia investigation, including whether or not “Muller will have the independence to do his job.”
Once Harris admitted that she’s concerned about that, Melber wondered: “Are you concerned that Rod Rosenstein may not provide that authority?” Melber also teed here up to state with a grin that President Trump might have to testify before Congress about the Russia investigation.
“We’ll see where the facts where the lead us,” Harris stated at one point.
To wrap things up, Melber offered up “a lightning round” of harmless word association:
MELBER: Democrats must —
HARRIS: — speak truth.
MELBER: Vladimir Putin should —
HARRIS: — stop interfering with our elections.
MELBER: Ted Cruz is —
HARRIS: — from Texas.
MELBER: If you had to be on an side with one of your current senate colleagues it would be —
HARRIS: — I can't choose between them. My Senate colleagues are like, they're just like a bouquet of flowers. How would I pick one out of that beautiful bouquet?
MELBER: Hillary Clinton is —
HARRIS: — a great, great public servant.
MELBER: Donald Trump is —
HARRIS: — President of the united States.
MELBER: Kamala Harris is —
HARRIS: — almost done with this interview. [LAUGHING]
MELBER: Most played song your Spotify list?
HARRIS: You could have asked what’s your great regret. My great regret on my Spotify list is I failed to put on one of my most favorite performers ever. Bootsy.
Rewinding to Tuesday night, The Last Word’s O’Donnell featured Harris and arguably sucked up to her more than Melber. Once he asked her about prospects of the DREAM Act passing Congress, O’Donnell lamented:
California has the largest number of dreamers. Some estimates 220,000. So it is the single biggest home in the United States to these people. And California is not one of the states whose attorney general is trying to sue to end DACA. What is it that California knows about this program? What did — what is it in your experience as a former California Attorney General that what would you tell the other states, especially the ones like Texas and the other states that are suing to stop DACA? What would you tell them about this program that you feel California knows that they don’t.
Now, what’s the best indicator that the interviewer is being a suck up? Oh, when their response is something like this (which Harris provided to O’Donnell): “Oh, it’s a wonderful question you’re asking. Because the one thing, Lawrence, that I’ve become really aware of is, there are a lot of people expressing opinions about DACA that have never met a Dreamer.”
As the duo mocked and ripped President Trump over his DACA move, O’Donnell decided to not really ask Harris questions but instead have a conversation with her:
The President was reportedly torn about this...[H]e seems to have satisfied no one. The dreamers who he’s given kind of a six-month window to hope for a new legislative solution can’t be satisfied. There’s a real threat to them and what happened today. And then those hard core Trump supporters who want to see bus loads of these kids deported immediately, they can take no satisfaction in what happened today. It seems like the President couldn’t find his way out of the political corner he painted himself into.
When it came to Sessions, O’Donnell jokingly ripped into the Attorney General by ruling that, based on the DACA announcement, “it seems Attorney General Jeff Sessions has a different definition of compassion than you do.”
The socialist MSNBC host couldn’t wait to talk about the California’s junior Senator’s support for single-payer health care:
And Senator, finally, a health care question. You have become the first co-sponsor on Bernie Sanders single-payer bill, Medicare for all, that people took notice of that everywhere including in local media in California that cover you and one of the reasons there’s a lot of interest in it is that Bernie Sanders was very successful as a Presidential candidate in pulling in certainly on the left side of the Democratic Party. People begin to wonder with that move joining Bernie Sanders’ bill, does that mean you might follow in Bernie Sanders’ footsteps as a Presidential candidate next time?
With interviews like these, the liberal media will certainly continue folding in Harris’s favor going into 2020 like they did with Barack Obama, leg thrills and all.
