Now that Donald Trump is president and the 2024 election a distant memory, mainstream journalists can finally admit that Kamala Harris was a terrible candidate and her campaign was a complete disaster. A recently published excerpt from a forthcoming book about the election offers an assessment of Harris’s candidacy that is dramatically different from the media coverage at the time.
“Vice President Kamala Harris wasn’t performing well in softball interviews as her sugar high faded in September and early October,” journalists Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen write in their book Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. Harris had “bombed” her interview with Fox News host Bret Baier, the authors continue, in the midst of negotiations to appear on Joe Rogan’s podcast. The appearance, which never happened, would have been “a relatively risky move for a campaign leadership that had kept its candidate hermetically sealed in the manufacturer’s box, like she would retain more value without exposure to air and sunlight.”
While accurate, the analysis is completely at odds with what many mainstream journalists were saying about Harris during the campaign. The suggestion that she “bombed” the Fox News interview, for example, does not reflect how the media covered Harris’s performance at the time. “She more than held her own,” Chris Suellentrop, politics editor for opinions at the Washington Post, said after the debate. “Baier was the one who seemed flustered. … It was fun to watch: We learned, I guess, that she is tough under fire and that she got genuinely angry about Trump.”
Post columnist Eugene Robinson declared it a triumph for Harris. “Practically since the day Harris became the Democratic nominee, Fox News hosts and guests have blasted her for not doing more unscripted interviews. Wednesday’s half-hour encounter was a reminder that we should all be careful what we wish for,” he wrote. “She stood her ground, refuting the Trump campaign’s claim that she is weak and easily pushed around. She spoke fluently and cogently, putting to rest GOP claims that all she offers is word salad.”
USA Today columnist Rex Huppke agreed. “Trump fans and his many minions at Fox News will undoubtedly say Harris failed miserably, but the truth, for people operating outside the bubble of insanity, is she more than held her own in a wildly adversarial situation,” he wrote. CNN’s Brian Stelter praised Harris for showing “toughness and strength.” Former Rep. Max Rose (D., N.Y.) called the interview a “home run” because Harris had shown “courage.” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough complained that Baier was “shockingly rude.” The New York Times suggested Baier’s aggressive questioning could endear Harris to female viewers. […]
— Read More: freebeacon.com
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