After over a month of avoiding any interviews or press conferences, Kamala Harris finally has something scheduled. According to CNN, the Democrat nominee will sit down with Dana Bash for her first formal sit-down of the campaign.
Earlier on Tuesday, reports were that internal divisions were still simmering over who exactly Harris would speak to. That included the revelation that campaign staffers were probing various "journalists" about who should get the "big" interview, no doubt looking for the easiest draw.
Kamala Harris' Latest Interview Ploy Shows How Terrified She Is
Things were settled over the course of the day. There's a big catch, though. This won't be an actual interview with Harris at the center. Instead, it'll be a joint taping with vice presidential pick Tim Walz.
The first thing that comes to mind is how pathetic this is. Harris went over a month without doing an interview as both the presumptive and official nominee, and after so much bluster, the best she can do is sit down with one of her biggest fans while having her running mate there to help prop her up.
Making this a joint interview is very deliberate because they typically devolve into the interviewer asking about their personal relationship, something that is completely irrelevant to voters. Every question about how much she likes Walz and how she came around to selecting him is less time to ask her anything serious.
With that said, Bash is such a hack that she isn't likely to ask any tough questions no matter how much time she's given. The examples of the left-wing anchor playing mouthpiece for the Democratic Party are numerous (click here and here). The smart money is on this "interview" being nothing but a slow-pitch softball session.
Still, this is Kamala Harris we are talking about, and there's always a chance she screws this up no matter how much the deck is stacked in her favor. Bash could ask a question meant for the vice president to knock out the park, and she might end up cackling uncontrollably instead. We'll have to see.
For now, though, this appears to be a box-checking exercise to say she's finally done an interview. Once this one is in the books, I wouldn't expect her to do too many more of them. Certainly, she's not going to sit down with someone like Lester Holt who, despite his biases, might throw a few fastballs at her.
Finally, after ducking an interview since she was handed the Democratic nomination for president on a silver platter, Kamala Harris is going to do an interview.
Of course, because it's the Democrats, you always know there's a little more to that story. It's not going to be a live interview. It's going to be on CNN and it will be taped. And the person conducting it will be Dana Bash, the same person who contested that Harris had been appointed border czar. So, you know even before we get to the interview, it's probably going to be a softball piece.
Oh, and there's one other big thing — Harris is not doing it alone; she's doing it with Tim Walz, her running mate.
So, she's been so afraid to do one that she's put off any interview at all for weeks since July 21, and now she can't even do one by herself? She needs the help of Tim Walz who has no problem talking, just a big problem with the truth. Is that so he can help her sound more lucid and fill in the blanks when she goes off into a word salad, and she can keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn't go off the reservation on the issues? Hopefully, they don't give them the questions ahead of time but all they have to do is a little favorable editing of the bad parts and the word salads.
Former President Donald Trump and JD Vance are constantly doing interviews and answering questions from the press. What does it mean when it's like pulling teeth to even get this much out of Harris? How can she possibly deal with world leaders when she can't even deal well with friendly press in a one-on-one interview?
As we've seen on Tuesday alone, we were getting stories about two different flip-flops. She can't even seem to keep her own beliefs or policies straight. Or she wants to be fuzzy during the campaign to make people believe she's flipped to more centrist views so if she gets in, she can say, "Oh, I never really said that."
But people weren't holding back with what a cowardly move they thought Harris was making here. Some compared it to a job interview and bringing along a parent to help you in the interview.
Megyn Kelly nailed it.
"The campaign claims she is going to give an interview but not solo - it will be w/Walz, her Emotional Support Governor," she declared.
Oh, my, and that's right on target. Just like a dog that she needs to keep her calm and stop her from going off the rails. It's so apropos for the Democrats in general. Everything is about the "feels"; nothing is about the substance. I fully expect the interview to be the same way — with nothing substantive and both Harris and Walz saying how they want to make things better without any real answer as to how.
If she needs all that help, the debate on Sept. 10 is likely to be quite a mess.