Vice President Kamala Harris is bad at press interviews due to “a fear of saying the wrong thing,” the News York Times’ Rebecca Davis O’Brien explained to the paper’s audience on Thursday.
Those criticisms appear to be confirmed in polling. A near-majority (48 percent) of Americans believe Harris just says what she thinks people want to hear, while only 36 percent think she says what she believes, a recent Economist/YouGov poll found:
O’Brien reported how “fear of saying the wrong thing” exposes Harris in “one-on-one televised interviews with journalists” who “have long been a weakness in her political arsenal,” where she “tends to muddy clear ideas with words or phrases that do not have a precise meaning”:
Reporters and fellow prosecutors who have known Ms. Harris over the years say that she has always been polite but cautious with the press, even in informal settings, a wariness that stems not from lack of preparation or curiosity but from a fear of saying the wrong thing.
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She often winds her way slowly toward an answer, leaning on jargon and rehearsed turns of phrase, using language that is sometimes derided as “word salad” but might be better described as a meringue.
These days, when Ms. Harris gives an interview, she hews to a set of well-rehearsed talking points, at times swimming in a sea of excess verbiage. Her first answer is often the most unsteady, a discursive journey to the point at hand. Like all politicians, she sometimes answers the question she would prefer to address, rather than the one actually asked of her — but not always artfully.
Several instances underscore O’Brien’s analysis.
During last Thursday’s interview with Oprah Winfrey, an audience member asked Harris about “specific” policy solutions to secure the southern border. She ignored the question, rambling off 441 words in about three minutes. Winfrey had to interject to force her to answer the question. “So to answer Justin’s question, now that that bill has gone and hasn’t passed, will you reintroduce that?” Oprah followed up on the question. “Absolutely, and when I am elected President of the United States, I will make sure that bill gets to my desk and I will sign it into law,” Harris replied.
Oprah Winfrey, accompanied by Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, listens to an audience member at Oprah’s Unite for America Live Streaming event Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024 in Farmington Hills, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
During the same interview, Harris delivered a rambling response about a plan to reduce soaring costs. She gave a 90-word response consisting of two sentences that began with platitudes about the “American dream.” She acknowledged the American dream is out of reach for “so many recently” under the Biden-Harris administration.
In an interview with Philadelphia’s Action News 6 ABC, Brian Taff asked Harris how she would go about bringing “down prices and making life more affordable for people.” She responded with the same rehearsed answer she used in the debate. “I grew up a middle class kid,” Harris replied, again ignoring the question. As Breitbart News reported, Harris’s claim is “mostly false.” She actually grew up with an affluent Canadian upbringing, having been raised in Westmount.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
