Dana Bash, for her part, did press Harris on some of the key points, and got both candidates a bit uncomfortable at times, but also fell into the trap of providing a menu of possible answers for Harris at times in instead of just asking the question and backing away to see what Harris would say.
The interview itself was billed as an hourlong affair, but it wasn't much more than 20-25 minutes. Bash was live going in and out of commercial breaks at the quarter hour, and there were plenty of B-roll video packages to help fill the time, and it was all over well before 9:50pm eastern. To Bash's credit, she spent vastly more time on Harris than Walz, and when she did approach Walz, it was to press him for essentially being caught as a serial liar.
We'll get to the key exchanges in just a minute, but the one thing that was striking about the interview was that during every break, there were commercials for the new Reagan movie starring Dennis Quaid. After watching Kamala Harris try to look presidential, then juxtaposed during the commercial breaks by a president who was the embodiment of how a president should look, act, and speak, it made Harris look smaller and smaller by the minute.
Bash began the interview by asking Harris what is her agenda for day one. It's actually a fair question. It also is a softball set up on a tee for Harris. How did she respond? The same way Javier Baez treats a changeup.
Here's the first exchange.
Kamala offered up almost a minute of word salad for a question that is the most fundamental question any presidential candidate could possibly be asked. She whiffed on the first pitch. Dana knew it. Her campaign knows it. The CNN panel of lefties afterwards, in their heart of hearts, know it.
Dana redirected the question. The first question. What are you going to do on day one? Harris swallowed hard, and without saying the words, doubled down on price controls on an industry with an average 1.4% markup, and inflation-ballooning housing subsidies. She didn't say the words 'price controls' and 'housing subsidies', because not only did every economist, left and right, dismiss her proposals as laughably unserious, members of Congress in her own party shied away from her plan as well. But this is apparently what she really wants to do - drive grocery stores out of business so you get to discover what bread lines and hyperinflation look like here instead of just reading about it in places like Venezuela.
She was asked to address the people who would like to go back to the days before things started costing so much.
I've watched Obi-Wan Kenobi. I've seen Sir Alec Guinness. Kamala Harris is no Jedi master. She cannot pull off the Jedi mind trick. Trying to intimate that the economy was flat-lined when she and Joe Biden came into office just isn't borne out by reality or facts. More people died from COVID on Biden's watch than Trump's, by far. The economy was already adding jobs when Biden took the oath of office. The economic engine had already refired before Kamala Harris began her three-and-a-half year demonstration of the Peter Principle. And yet, under Trump, inflation was under 2%, energy and food were both affordable. She has no answer to this that gets anywhere near the truth.
Why hasn't Harris done more to solve the problems she outlines as vice president?
It's Trump's fault. Donald Trump is to blame for the fact that Kamala Harris can't address any of the myriad of crises facing this country that developed on her watch. It's just a weak answer any way you slice it. Then, there's this.
Literally no one believes her on her newfound religion on fracking. People in Pennsylvania don't believe her, Republicans don't believe her, and the Greenies in the Democratic base don't believe her. You know who else doesn't believe her? Dana Bash.
Kamala 2.0 - My values haven't changed, but my positions have for electoral expediency. I don't know how she's going to get away with 'I've been very clear about where I stand, my values haven't changed, but my values have changed if you happen to live in a state I need where my values conflict with yours.'
The root causes of immigration problems are Trump's fault. It's truly stunning the power this man has had being out of power for three-and-a-half years. In fact, if someone has the ability to be able to manifest utter fecklessness out of the other party, that alone should be reason enough to give him another term.
Harris also is demanding the immigration bill that died in the Senate be passed for one reason and one reason only - it grants amnesty to the millions who are here, turning them into potential Democratic voters.
Should the border be decriminalized? What follows is a classic example of a non-answer.
She's processed transnational gangs, she would have you believe. Apparently, these friendly chaps in a Aurora, Colorado apartment complex this week didn't get that memo.
An Armed Illegal Alien Street Gang from Venezuela Seizes an Apartment Complex in Aurora, Colorado—Residents Terrified!
— Wesley Hunt (@WesleyHuntTX) August 29, 2024
Meanwhile, Joe Biden is on his second vacation in two weeks and Kamala Harris is preparing for her first interview in 40 days.
Who is running the country? pic.twitter.com/HE7zL8RPLC
Here is the big highlight of the interview - the flip-flop explanation. This was by far Kamala Harris' worst answer of the night, and that's with Bash turning the question into a multiple choice quiz.
Kamala says her values have not changed. Great to know. Her values are steeped in San Francisco liberal Marxism. That means all of her previous views on tape stand. She said so. Her values have not changed.
In the middle of her word salad on climate change proposals, she dropped in another Kamalist nugget for the archives - deadlines of time. You know, as opposed to the deadlines that have nothing to do with time. I've often marvelled at how welcoming Ed and the staff here at Hot Air are about the non-time constraints of an 8am deadline for a column. I'm absolutely positive James Carville saw this, went back to Michelle Obama's Tuesday speech at the Democratic Convention, and told Mary Matalin, "This is why we can't have nice things."
Harris views herself as an intellect - a political philosopher. Let's speak the truth, shall we? She's a lightweight. And this undeniable fact was demonstrated under the most favorable circumstances CNN could provide. Donald Trump is not going to afford her the same courtesies at a debate when she lapses into word salad as a cover for her own incompetence.
On foreign policy, an area not given nearly enough time by Bash, the subject of what Harris would do different in the war between Israel and Hamas came up. Here was Harris' answer.
I support Israel, but...we need a ceasefire. I don't care how many times Kamala Harris claims she supports Israel. The second she inserts a comma and a but at the end of the sentence, you can pretty much throw out the prior sentiment, because she's only saying it because she feels she has to.
A deal has not been done, even with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris offering Hamas everything humanly possible. Hamas keeps rejecting every proposal. It's almost as if Hamas isn't interested in Harris' fantasy of a two-state solution, and they'd rather just keep killing Jews until there aren't any Jews left.
Harris is an economic illiterate, and that's potentially ruinous to this country. Her foreign policy illiteracy will get millions killed and cause the globe to descend into further chaos. She has never had the chops to do foreign policy, she never will understand it, and the world is at a tipping point now where another incompetent American president might remove us from the world superpower stage once and for all.
Ah, the justification for lying to you every day for four years about the continuing mental decline of Joe Biden. She doesn't deny she did it, and actually seems pretty proud of herself for being loyal and lying to you about it. I'm not sure that's the flex she's looking for. If Kamala Harris is willing to lie about something as serious as the commander-in-chief not being up to the job of being president, and willing to lie to the American people in order to con them out of a vote for another four years, what else is she willing to gleefully lie about? Her position on fracking, perhaps? Her immigration/border position? Her view on taxes? Her unconditional support of Israel? If she embraces the big lie because it's done for a noble reason, it still makes her a big liar, doesn't it?
Tim Walz was all but ignored for the hour. He got a bone thrown his way now and again, and got the kid glove treatment at the very end about joining the ticket and what seeing how his son reacted at the Convention meant. But on the one meaningful exchange he had with Bash on all of the lies he's told about his own biography, here's what Walz said.
The campaign has had a month to prepare for such an obvious question, and this is the best Walz can do? Bad grammar?
Never has the country been so close to voting in a ticket this radical, this unprepared, and this incompetent. I have to believe that tonight served as the canary in the coal mine, and that following the debates, we will witness the long, slow fade back into the wilderness for the Democratic Party for at least the next four years.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member