CNN went to great lengths to protect Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris from herself, but in her first big interview, she ended up coming across as clueless.
Interviewer Dana Bash asked a series of soft questions that Harris should have been able to answer easily, but instead, as usual, she delivered the usual gags. Minnesota Governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz didn't help either, as he struggled to answer questions about his “war record” and past lies about a drunk driving arrest.
It's not that CNN didn't try its best to help the pair get through the interview as unscathed as possible: User X claims that the interview was 41 minutes long, but that the network edited the pre-recorded chat to 18 minutes because Harris wasn't as clever as she usually sounds.
If this is true, the network has deleted more than half of the interview.
Our administration is Trump's fault.
Harris was quick to attack former President Donald Trump, who has not governed the country for the past four years.
Asked what she would do on her first day as president, Harris promised to “do all I can to support and strengthen the middle class,” without providing details.
Then the attacks on Trump began.
Unfortunately, over the last decade, the former president has been the one who has really promoted policies and an environment that has weakened our character and our strength as Americans and divided our country, and I think the public is ready to move away from that.
As for Day 1, Harris spat out clouds of ink like a squid.
“I've already put forward some proposals on that front, including what we'll do to lower the prices of everyday goods, what we'll do to invest in American small businesses, what we'll do to invest in families,” she said.
Bash then pointed out that one of Harris's most passionate campaign slogans was “We won't back down,” and asked a surprisingly hostile question.
“But I wonder what to say to voters who want to go back to the previous administration when the economy was better under President Donald Trump because food was cheaper and housing was more affordable,” Bash rightly asked.
Harris blamed the Biden economy's massive price increases on “President Donald Trump's mismanagement” of the COVID-19 pandemic, with Trump, rather than the president in the White House, likely to be to blame for 8.3% inflation in 2022.
Governor Harris touted a plan to stop price gouging that Democrats say will never become law, and promised a “$25,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers” to lower home prices.
Bash correctly asked why she and Biden had not acted on these and other proposals during their three-plus years in office, which Harris said was Trump's fault.
First of all, we needed to get our economy going, and we got that done. I'm very proud of the work we did to keep inflation below 3 percent, to cap insulin costs for seniors at $35 a month. Donald Trump said he was going to do a bunch of things, like allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices. That didn't happen. We did.
For and Against Hydraulic Fracturing
Bash also sharply criticized Harris for her change of policy on fracking: “There's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking,” Harris said after losing the 2019 presidential primary.
But that's not the case today, Harris says.
I made it clear in the 2020 debates that I would not ban fracking. As Vice President, I would not ban fracking. As President, I would not ban fracking.
When Bash pressed her on the question, Harris said the same thing.
In 2020 I made my position clear. It is now 2024 and that position has not changed and will not change. I have kept my promise and will continue to keep it.
When Bash asked Harris why she had changed her mind, she offered a string of words.
Let me be clear: my values ​​haven't changed. I believe it's crucial that we think seriously about what we need to do to protect ourselves from the clear climate crisis, and we can do that by doing what we've already done.
Trump is to blame for the immigrant invasion
Trump is also responsible for the incursion of illegal immigrants at the border, which was brought about by the Biden-Harris administration.
“Why did the Biden-Harris administration wait three and a half years to implement comprehensive refugee restrictions?” Bash asked.
Harris argued that crashes at the southwest border have decreased since she and Biden focused on the issue, “and through a bipartisan effort that included some of the most conservative members of the United States Congress, we have legislation that we support and that I support.”
But she lied when she said evil Trump sabotaged that effort.
Donald Trump heard about this bill that was supposed to help secure the border. But he didn't think it would help him politically, so he told his colleagues in Congress, “Don't submit it.” He killed it. The Border Security bill would have put an additional 1,500 agents on the border. And I'll be clear: the Border Patrol approved it.
As Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, Trump's running mate, wrote in The American Conservative in February, fellow conservatives were opposed to the bill even before Trump had said anything about it.
Harris also said she didn't regret misleading the public about Biden's apparent cognitive decline, though Bash did not use those words.
Waltz Dodges
Bash confronted Waltz about three major lies: his claim that he served in war, his claim that he was sober when he was arrested by police for drunk driving in 1995, and his claim that he and his wife, Gwen, had conceived a child through IVF.
Waltz admitted he misspoke on the first statement, but evaded the second and third.
Well, I've been very public. My students and former colleagues that I worked with have come out publicly and I think they can vouch for me. When I make a mistake, I always admit it. One thing I can say is I hope we don't have to do this in this country. I've spoken about infertility because it's a hellish situation and my family knows it. And I've spoken about the treatments that gave birth to those beautiful children. I'm in stark contrast to the people who are trying to take those rights away from us.
Edited interview?
Minutes after the interview aired at 9pm ET, X-user Pauley wrote that her “close friend” was CNN's editor in chief, and that CNN had “41 minutes of tape,” but that “Harris and her team disputed more than half of the interview that had already been recorded.”
Harris forced the network to remove the question Bash had asked, Pauley wrote. The CNN commentator wanted to know how Harris could support the Green New Deal and fracking.
Pauly writes:
She didn't have an answer to that question other than to say, “Get it done.”
The phrase does not appear in the CNN transcript.
