After weeks of dodging serious press questioning, Kamala Harris on Thursday will finally do a live, unedited interview, one-on-one with a fiercely critical journalist . . . not.
Instead, it’ll be a two-on-one chat with veep-nominee Tim Walz as her wingman.
And it’ll be pre-taped, to air at 9 p.m.: America will never know what Harris word salads (or worse) get left on the cutting-room floor.
And it won’t be, say, Fox News’ Bret Baier asking the questions, but Kam-friendly Dana Bash from Kam-friendly CNN (no doubt because her campaign couldn’t find a “journalist” more in love with Harris and hostile to Donald Trump).
Making it a tag-team “defense” understandably has sparked the most outrage, but all the arrangements show that Harris’ campaign wants the least possible transparency.
This is the woman who wants to be the first female president?
Unable to face an objective reporter, live, on her own?
How will she handle adversaries like Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping?
No, this looks less like an interview and more of an infomercial — all spin, from start to finish.
CNN’s Dana Bash at the Democratic National Convention. CNN
The big test for Bash is whether she pushes Harris to explain and defend her plans:
Does she truly now favor fracking, as her campaign suggests? Or is she closer to her 2019 vow, “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning” it?
And if she really is flipping, why was she wrong before?
Does she plan on pushing government-only health care — Medicare for All — and the end of private insurance, as she suggested back then? If not, what changed? Is she still a backer of the Green New Deal? How does her sudden willingness to fund Trump’s border wall square with her earlier view that funding it “would be a gross misuse of taxpayer money”?
Indeed, a new Harris ad paints her as eager to beef up security at the border; it even shows pictures of the wall. So why hasn’t Harris — President Biden’s border czar — seen that it’s already beefed up?
Most important: This is one single interview; even if Bash gets tough, voters can only learn a bit.
