[For some reason I can’t unembed the previous version of the video that worked this morning…]
I’m still waiting for a transcript, but if you were lucky enough to miss last night’s Kamala Harris Hail Mary interview with Bret Baier on Fox News, that’s the whole thing above. Harris arrived 10 minutes late for the interview and her staff cut it off early, so instead of the promised 30 minute interview with someone more prone to asking genuine questions than, say, The View’s panel of progressive dolts, Harris struggled through less than that. She is literally trying to run out the clock, perhaps a sound strategy when you’re ahead, but a cowardly when you are behind.
Observations:
- Yesterday I opined that Harris has virtually nothing to support her argument for being President other than the irrefutable fact that she isn’t Donald Trump and that women should be able to kill their unborn children at will—and the President has almost no power to assist with the latter. Based on last night’s interview, I was literally correct. I expected Harris to be a little better prepared to issue some substance in the interview; now that I saw it, I don’t know what I was thinking. There literally is no substance to Harris or her candidacy, at least nothing she’s willing or able to express publicly. She really thinks she will get away with this, and that not being that Hitler/dictator/liar/super-villain/monster Trump is enough to win. Fascinating.
- Harris did everything she could to avoid answering questions. constantly shifting to “But Trump…” I assume this was the agreed-upon strategy because she and her party think the American public is stupid and can’t recognize desperate deflection and fakery when it is right in front of their eyes. Maybe they are stupid. We shall see.
- When Baier asked the obvious question about why Harris kept talking about “change” and “turning the page” when she, her party, and the man whose policies she endorsed without exception or reservations on “The View” have been in the metaphorical driver’s seat since 2021, Harris answered,
“Well, first of all, turning the page from the last decade in which we have been burdened with the kind of rhetoric coming from Donald Trump that has been designed and implemented to divide our country…”
Later she elaborated, sort of, saying “Let me be very clear—My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency. Like every new President that comes into office I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences, and fresh and new ideas.”
- Then..
Baier: “[M]ore than 70 percent of people tell the country is on the wrong track. They say the country is on the wrong track. If it’s on the wrong track, that track follows three and a half years of you being Vice President and president Biden being President. That is what they’re saying, 79% of them. Why are they saying that? If you are turning the page, you’ve been in office for three and a half years.”
Harris: “And Donald Trump has been running for office since …
Baier: “But you’ve been the person holding the office!”
Harris: “Come on, come on!”
Baier: “Madam Vice President.”
Harris: “You and I both know what I’m talking about. You and I both know what I’m talking about.”
Baier: “I actually don’t. What are you talking about?”
Harris: “What I’m talking about is that over the last decade, people have become …”
Baier: “But you have the lever of power!”
Harris: “But, listen, over the last decade, it is clear to me and certainly the Republicans who are on stage with me. The former chief of staff to the President, Donald Trump, former defense secretaries, national security adviser and his Vice President, one that he is unfit to serve that he is unstable, that he is dangerous, and that people are exhausted with someone who professes to be a leader who spends full time demeaning and nd engaging in personal grievances and it being about him and…”
Baier: “Madam Vice President.”
Harris: “… instead of the American people. People are tired of that.”
Baier: “If that’s the case why is half the country supporting him? Why is he beating you in a lot of swing states? Why, if he’s as bad as you say that half of this country is now supporting this person who could be the 47th president of the United States? Why is that happening?”
Harris: “This is an election for president of the United States. It’s not supposed to be easy.”
Baier: “I know, but if it’s as…”
Harris: “It’s not supposed to be a cake walk for anyone.”
Baier: “So are they misguided, the 50%? Are they stupid?”
Harris: “Oh, god, I would never say that about the American people. And, in fact, when you listen to Donald Trump, if you watch any of his rallies, he is the one who tends to demean and belittle and diminish the American people. He is the one who talks about an enemy within — within — an enemy within — talking about the American people, suggesting he would turn the American military on the American people.”
- Here’s another glaring example of how all Harris could do was deflect to Trump rather than discuss her own positions:
Baier: “So, are you still in support of using taxpayer dollars to help prison inmates to detained illegal aliens on inmates to transgender?
Harris: “I will follow a law and it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed. You’re probably familiar with — now it’s a public report that under Donald Trump’s administration, these surgeries were available to on a medical necessity basis to people in the federal prison system and I think, frankly, that ad from the Trump campaign is a little bit of, like, throwing, you know, stones when you’re living in a glass house.”
Baier: “The Trump aides say he never advocated for that prison policy and no gender transition surgeries happened during his…”
Harris: Well, you know what? You gotta take responsible for what happened in your administration.
Baier: “He had no surgeries happened in his presidency.”
Harris: “It’s in black and white.”
Baier: “So, would you still advocate for using taxpayer dollars for gender reassignment surgeries?”
Harris: “I will follow the law, just as I…”
Baier: “But you have a say in…”
Harris: “I think Donald Trump would say he did.”
Baier: “You would have a say as president.”
Harris: “Like I said, I think he spent $20 million on those ads trying to create a sense of fear in the voters because he actually has no plan in this election that is about focusing on the needs of the American people whereas a $20 million on that ad on an issue that, as it relates to the biggest issue that effect the American people, it’s really quite remote and, again, his policy was no different. Look at where we are though.”
Oh.
- This was Harris’s “But Trump!” deflection when Baier asked when it was that she began to figure out that President Biden was losing marbles at a rapid rate, and why she kept insisting he was as sharp as ever:
“Joe Biden I have watched from the Oval Office to the Situation Room, and he has the judgment and the experience to do exactly what he has done in making very important decisions on behalf of the American people. Brett, Joe Biden’s not on the ballot, and Donald Trump is … I think the American people have a concern about Donald Trump.”
- I would like to read or hear the reasoning by a Democrat zombie that Harris was effective in this interview. I ban commenters on Ethics Alarms who argue like she did.
- Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias (or coordination of the news media through Axis High Command)! The memo went out that the official spin to be put on this debacle is that Harris showed she was strong and combative. The official word-of-the- day was “feisty” which—I’m sure it was a coincidence—shows up again and again. Baier, naturally, is being criticized for being “rude” by trying to get Harris to answer his questions. “Kamala Harris Arrived for a Fox Interview. She Got a Debate,” whined the Times, as if the mainstream media hacks haven’t treated every interview with Trump or Vance as an adversarial encounter.
- Over at Alhouse’s place, the supposedly “fiercely” objective blogger’s reaction to the interview was “I’ve been waiting for Harris to do a tough, challenging interview, and it was painful to watch the deflection and evasion. The main defense seemed to be to make Bret Baier look bad because he interrupted. Terrible.” In the almost 200 comments to her post so far, only “Inga,” the Democrat troll that Althouse tolerates for some reason, was anything but disgusted with Harris’s performance. Inga wrote in part, “Harris did an excellent job. Much much much better than Trump if he were to have been interviewed by Rachel Maddow or someone on MSNBC or CNN, that’s why he is chickenshit to face a tough interviewer.”
How deluded or dishonest must someone be to call Harris’s performance “an excellent job”?
- Baier is getting criticized by Trump supporters because he didn’t ask other questions, such as grilling Harris about the FBI report just released that showed a much higher murder rate in the U.S. under Biden than had been reported before. If Harris had submitted to an hour-ling interview as she should have, Baier would have been able to ask more questions.
ADDED…
Harris had some gall going on about Trump’s “enemy within” quote, which she and others, including the New York Times, mischaracterized. Here’s the Times [I think all Harris did is read the Times piece and adopted its spin.]
With three weeks left before Election Day, former President Donald J. Trump is pushing to the forefront of his campaign a menacing political threat: that he would use the power of the presidency to crush those who disagree with him.
In a Fox News interview on Sunday, Mr. Trump framed Democrats as a pernicious “enemy from within” that would cause chaos on Election Day that he speculated the National Guard might need to handle.
A day later, he closed his remarks to a crowd at what was billed as a town hall in Pennsylvania with a stark message about his political opponents.
“They are so bad and frankly, they’re evil,” Mr. Trump said. “They’re evil. What they’ve done, they’ve weaponized, they’ve weaponized our elections. They’ve done things that nobody thought was even possible.”
How the Times gets from those comments to “use the power of the presidency to crush those who disagree with him” I don’t know. Do you? He predicted Democrats rioting, and that is exactly what others (including me) have predicted. The National Guard quells riots. If the National Guard is called out on Election Day, it will be the Biden Administration that does it.
Harris said that Trump called “the public” the “enemy within,” which makes no sense and isn’t what he said. He called her party “the enemy within.” That’s what it is, as I have documented here for months and years. Trump is, as usual, sloppy with explaining himself, but if there is anyone who has no standing to criticize him for characterizing her party as “the enemy within,” it is a member of this…
…administration. As for “They’ve done things that nobody thought was even possible,” that is true. Beginning with executing an investigation of the President based on false information from the Democratic Presidential campaign, Harris’s party has executed two impeachments that did not conform to Constitutional and established norms, corrupted a Presidential election by loosening ballot security standards, held a partisan star chamber inquiry over a single riot at the Capitol to establish the falsehood that Trump attempted an “insurrection,” and used partisan prosecutors to pursue multiple legal cases against their most formidable political opponent. Then they appointed a Presidential candidate with no participation by the voting public whatsoever, Soviet-style.
Trump’s statement was essentially correct. The Democrats have become a pernicious enemy of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the political process.
Ethics Alarms 