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August 30, 2024
The Beltway Media Got Its Harris Interview. Can We Move on Now?
Harris and Walz held their own during an interview driven more by media-made controversies than substance.
Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz sit for a joint interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.
(Screen shot/ CNN)
No sooner had Vice President Kamala Harris agreed to the high-profile interview that media factotems had been demanding since she was endorsed by President Joe Biden—a sit-down with CNN’s Dana Bash alongside her running mate, Governor Tim Walz—a new nontroversy arose. Why wouldn’t Harris sit down by herself? Why did she need Walz by her side?
“First question to Harris ought to be why she couldn’t appear solo?” Mark Knoller of CBS radio tweeted huffily. Meghan McCain pretended to be a feminist. “I don’t know if democrats (sic) fully realize how damaging the image of the possible first woman president being incapable of giving an interview alone without the presence of a man to help her is,” McCain wrote on X. The odious CNN contributor Scott Jennings referred to Walz as Harris’s “emotional support animal.” Speaking of animals, South Dakota’s dog-killing governor, Kristi Noem, weighed in, telling Newsmax that Harris was being “propped up” by a man—just in case Harris “started giggling” and “looking crazy.”
I hate to tell Meghan McCain that her father must have been emasculated by appearing with his vice-presidential pick, the titanic Sarah Palin, around the same time in the campaign. Every presidential nominee since 2004 has done an interview with his or her running mate soon after their convention. Kamala Harris got endorsed by Biden 40 days ago. She was nominated by her party a week ago. The idea that she’s late to any of this is ridiculous.
Aside from trashing Harris for having Walz at her side, the main issues the Beltway media wanted addressed—how Harris explains her alleged flip-flops since her 2019 presidential campaign, how 24-year National Guard veteran Walz might have misstated his record on occasion—got addressed. Congrats, guys (and some gals). We got answers! It was often tedious.
CNN’s Dana Bash did… adequately. She did not indulge in the right-wing tropes against Harris, although her microscopic focus on how Harris has changed positions—on immigration, on fracking—since her unsuccessful 2020 presidential campaign felt like Beltway myopia to me. We have millions of young voters who weren’t eligible in 2019 or 2020. Maybe they enjoyed that stroll down memory lane; maybe they tuned out. On fracking, Harris said her experience as vice president has shown her “we can grow and increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.” She added, “My values have not changed.”
Her increased conservatism on immigration is tougher to finesse; like Joe Biden, she relied on the bipartisan border deal Trump wiped off the table.
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“Through bipartisan work that included some of the most conservative members of Congress, a bill was crafted, which we supported, which I support,” she told Bash. “Donald Trump got word of this bill, and because he believed it would not have helped him politically…he killed the bill. The Border Patrol endorsed the bill, because they’re working around the clock, and 1,500 more agents would have helped them.”
Does she still believe border crossings should be decriminalized, as she said in one 2019 debate? Bash asked.
“I believe we have laws that should be followed,” she answered, adding: “I’m the only person in this race who has prosecuted transnational organizations trafficking in guns, drugs, and human beings.”
Her answer on the Israel-Hamas war was probably less satisfying to those who want a ceasefire now. Like me. “Let me be very clear: I’m unequivocal and unwavering in Israel’s defense…. And that’s not gonna change. But let’s take a step back. October 7. Twelve hundred people are massacred. Many young people who are simply attending a music festival. Women were horribly raped. As I said then, I say today: Israel had a right to defend itself….And how it does so matters. Far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. And we have got to get a deal done. We must get a deal that is about getting the hostages out. I’ve met with the families of the American hostages…. Let’s get the hostages out, let’s get a deal done.”
“So no change in policy, in terms of arms and so forth?” Bash asked.
“No. We have to get a deal done.” She added, “I’ve been committed to a two-state solution.”
On a surface level, that’s defensible; negotiations are ongoing. Also, a point she could have made: We only have one president at a time. She really can’t, and arguably shouldn’t, contradict Biden’s stated policy.
But for those of us hoping she will stop our country from waving through endless lethal arms sales to Israel… well, we will have to wait for more information.
The last third of the interview turned to Tim Walz. (For anyone who worried that he’d chivalrously throw himself in front of Harris to block mean questions, he did not.) That’s where Bash—and CNN—went off the rails. The program’s chyron suddenly blared: “Tim Walz addresses controversies.” That’s never good.
“Tim Walz” and “controversies” is not a crossword puzzle question or a Trivial Pursuit prompt. This was bullshit.
Predictably, Bash asked the 24-year National Guard veteran about the fact that he’d described carrying “weapons in war” when technically, I guess, he should have said “weapons of war,” since he was never in a war zone, only in an overseas zone to support our various wars as needed.
Walz quickly answered: “First of all, I’m incredibly proud of having done 24 years of wearing the uniform of this country. Equally proud of my service in a public school classroom…. People know me, they know who I am, they know where my heart is.”
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Bash pushed him, as is her job, and he went on. “It was after a school shooting, the idea of carrying these ‘weapons of war.’” Then he pivoted. “But again, if it’s not this, it’s an attack on my children for showing love for me. Or it’s an attack on my dog.” (His adorable black-lab rescue, Scout, if you didn’t know. Right-wingers are getting RFK Jr.’s brainworm infection.)
Or, Governor, it’s an attack on your saying that you and your wife used IVF to conceive your children “when in fact, you used a different fertility [method] to have children,” as Bash said. How dare you, sir? She quickly moved on to allegedly false statements his staff made in 2006 about a 1995 arrest for drunk driving, to which he pleaded guilty and after which he quit drinking entirely.
Kamala Harris has never been a defense attorney, only a prosecutor, but I could see her switching sides watching Walz submit to Bash’s shitty line of questioning. Her side-eye was deafening.
Walz went straight for the creepy question about his family’s infertility treatments. “I wish I didn’t have to do this, but I spoke about our infertility issues because it’s health, and families know this. I spoke about the treatments that were available to us. That’s quite a contrast with folks that are trying to take those rights away from us. I don’t think Americans are cutting hairs on IVF or IUI; I think they’re cutting hairs on the idea of an abortion ban and the ability to deny families a chance for a beautiful child.”
Kamala Harris gets to go back to being “for the people.” Tim Walz, she knows, can defend himself.
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Joan Walsh
Joan Walsh, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, is a coproducer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show and the author of What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America. Her new book (with Nick Hanauer and Donald Cohen) is Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power and Wealth In America.
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