You have to give Donald Trump credit. He boldly marches in where most politicians fear to tread. He has already done an interview with CNN. And, despite being called a racist at every turn, among Republican candidates he has been stalwart at talking to everyone of every race who will listen. His presumed opponent, however, is imitating the 2020 Biden strategy of hiding from the press and only giving preformulated images. It’s not exactly surprising, given Kamala Harris’s verbal incapacity. But it will need to be challenged.
Trump’s appearance this week at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) conference in Chicago was, as usual, depicted as “controversial” by most “mainstream” outlets, but that doesn’t tell us much. Everything the man does or says is labeled that way. A detail of the aftermath does tell us something. Immediately afterward, the calls not to “platform” Trump started coming out. It’s a strange business. If everything he says is so terrible, wouldn’t Democrats and their friends in the media want him platformed so that people can see how horrible the man is? Wouldn’t they want more of this kind of interview?
Of course they would, which is why the calls not to platform him again should be seen as a win. For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about his 34-minute interview, much of it seems likely to be on account of how well he did in the face of hostile questioning. “I’m a lifetime member of NABJ,” tweeted the film producer Tariq Nasheed, “But they sat up here and got COOKED by Trump today by trying to act like shills for the Democrats. If they would have been more objective, their grilling would not have backfired on them.”
Nasheed wasn’t the only one. After Trump’s interview, several black callers to The Breakfast Club, a nationally syndicated talk show hosted by Charlamagne, gave support and/or grudging respect to Trump for daring to go into a hostile environment. One defended Trump’s statements on the problems mass immigration is creating for Americans. And the fact that Trump was willing to do the interview was contrasted with Kamala Harris’s absence. If Kamala can’t show up for an interview on friendly territory, where can she show up?
The answer, it would seem, is nowhere. Newsweek published a piece by reporter Carlo Versano this week about the fact that Harris hasn’t done an interview since June 24. In true MSM fashion, the piece has a “Republicans pounce” angle in it, seen not only in the article itself (“Republicans immediately pounced”) but even in the two-line title: “Kamala Harris Hasn’t Done an Interview in Weeks. Republicans Have Noticed.” But at least the magazine has been forced to notice themselves and give their various excuses as to why she hasn’t done any: she doesn’t want to take the focus off of Trump who is supposedly stumbling; she has given extended interviews in the past; she is doing fundraisers and political events; and so forth. What our regime media takes away from the Democratic candidate by reporting on flaws they must immediately give back by pouring forth a slew of DNC talking points.
Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky appeared on CNN this week and answered questions about this lack of journalistic opportunity to ask Harris about her “evolution” on various positions she has suddenly and miraculously abandoned (most likely upon figuring out that views like banning fracking are vote-killers in those swing states she needs). Roginsky explained that Harris is going to “spend her 300 million dollars defining herself on tv and social media in the way she wants,” though conceding she may well “sit with you” eventually. She urged journalists to focus on the issues that would affect ordinary people these days—presumably instead of asking about all the crazy things Harris has said over the years in the way of kookie leftism or her own thin record of accomplishment.
What Roginsky is saying in so many words is that Democrats sure aren’t going to let Harris talk on her own anywhere where there is a hint of trouble. This is not surprising. Reports going back to her previous offices indicate that the presumed nominee has made a habit of not looking at briefing materials her own staff gave her and then blaming the staff for her own unpreparedness. She certainly never seems prepared to address anything substantial…or even make much sense.
Two months ago, before Harris had been anointed by the media and Democratic bigs as the new candidate, the lefty Daily Show mocked her in a skit that blended actual footage and commentary by a “holistical thought advisor” explaining how she helped the then-Vice President. “It’s a process,” the woman says, “that I call speaking without thinking.” After saying that people don’t actually need to understand what their political representatives mean, the advisor opines, “I prefer to leave Kamala’s thoughts open to interpretation, like a work of modern art that you look at and go, ‘I wonder what that was all about?’”
As a presidential candidate, she’s still that bad. In fact, this week her campaign issued edited transcripts of her remarks on the return of journalist Evan Gershkovich from Russia. She had rambled on about “having a president who understands the power of diplomacy and understands the strength that rests in understanding the significance of diplomacy and strengthening alliances.” But apart from these very weird soliloquies, it’s probably her understandable comments that worry those Democratic strategists.
When she isn’t declaring that she will confiscate guns within her first hundred days in office, increase mass immigration, and grant amnesty to illegal immigrants, she is promising to impose rent control on all Americans, a maneuver Judge Glock calls “the best way to destroy cities besides bombing them.” Democratic strategists are right to want her to “define herself” in some vague and highly curated way, since everything she says that can be understood without dropping acid beforehand is the crazy stuff that Julie Roginsky’s “ordinary Americans” will find destructive to their own daily lives.
It’s pretty unlikely our sycophantic media will want to dig too deeply into Harris’s views. So it will be up to the Trump campaign and the American people to keep pressing Harris to actually answer some questions. Like the Joe Biden of 2020 and beyond, she looks as though she’s going to avoid any reporters with an impulse to ask difficult questions—or even any questions at all. She won’t want to answer them, but Americans need to know if there are any answers at all. We’re pretty sure we’re entitled to that.
David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. A past Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, he is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X @davidpdeavel.
