In Vino Veritas - in wine, there is truth. It's not just a funny Latin slogan that can be used to mock former Vice-President Kamala Harris. It appears to be her North Star.
At the height of Brat Summer, those magical, glorious six weeks where the Democratic establishment, media and elected, turned on a dime regarding their presentation of the former Democratic nominee for president in 2024, Harris went from being sidelined in the Biden administration because she was a bigger gaffe machine than the President himself. That's saying something. Harris was understood widely to not be quick at all on her feet, and woefully in over her head as a pol.
But once Joe Biden announced he was not going to accept the nomination under pressure from Democratic donors, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the narrative around Kamala changed instantly to dozens of columns about her level of bratness, how smart, funny, insightful, polished, and ready she was to do the big job.
A year ago yesterday, Inside Hook ran a feature piece on Kamala Harris, the wine afficionado. The article mentions how proud she was to be a member of the Congressional Wine Caucus, her love of hanging out at the Cork Wine Bar in Washington, D.C., and the wineries of which she'd been a member in the past. This was presented as a selling point to how cool Kamala is. She's hip. She's young...er than Joe Biden. She gets it.
I'm not here to call for an intervention, nor am I here to say she might have a problem. What I am saying is that people on pure air alone, without any liquid encouragement, don't act this way.
BREAKING: Multiple police officers have come forward stating that Kamala is 100% intoxicated in this clip and she would’ve been charged with a DUI if she was behind the wheel of a car.
— aka (@akafaceUS) August 18, 2024
pic.twitter.com/odcy5rRHvW
Is Kamala Harris drunk again?
— Vince Langman (@LangmanVince) July 31, 2025
pic.twitter.com/CNJ82bug9f
Failed presidential candidate Kamala Harris has released a new video statement to her supporters.
— PNW Conservative (@UnderWashington) November 26, 2024
It is her first on-camera speech since conceding the election.
And she’s drunk AF 🤣
pic.twitter.com/S25SZkcBSn
I have no idea what she would have blown on a breathalyzer immediately after those three clips, but there's a pretty good chance it's not 0.0. Again, not judging here, but why in the world should we be surprised now that a woman who clearly has a passion for the fruit of the vine goes on a dying TV show to emit sour grapes?
The Harris rehab tour has officially begun. No, not one of substance abuse. I'm talking about her political rehab tour. Mark McKinnon, who consulted on at least five presidential campaigns of which I'm aware, witnessed the last 48 hours of Harris - the announcement of her new book, 107 Days, her demurring of running for governor of California and why, and her appearance Thursday night on one of the thankfully few remaining episode of Stephen Colbert's Late Show. This is what he said.
Now I agree with McKinnon that this is the way back from the wilderness into the world of politics if you've suffered a moral or professional defeat. The problem for Harris? I would bet the suddenly-more-valuable farm that Harris has no clue what's in her own book, the only listening tour Kamala will engage in is with donors if they're willing to throw dollars her direction to run in 2028, and Colbert's show can be called a lot of things. Comedy is not one of them.
After her stilted video announcement of 107 Days, read off a teleprompter, because she still does not possess the ability to speak off-the-cuff even about her own life story from last year, the White House Press Corps cast lots to see who got to be the lucky person to ask Donald Trump what he thought about Kamala Harris in a press gaggle. Here's Trump's answer.
Phil Mattingly on CNN offered up a theory about the new and improved Kamala Harris. Now that she lost, she's free to shoot from the hip and say everything she always wanted to say and couldn't. More wishcasting.
Former MSNBC contributor and former Harris campaign press spokesperson Adrienne Elrod appeared on, funnily enough, MSNBC to talk about Harris' future, which you'll be surprised to learn from Elrod is rosier than ever.
Of course, all this commentary took place before her actual interview with Colbert. How'd she do with all this newfound freedom? About what you'd expect - awful. Ed has a lot of the details. Here's the pith of her gist.
From the inception of her political career, literally and figuratively underneath Willie Brown, arguably California's most powerful political force in the last 50 years, through stints as California Attorney General and United States Senator, to her disastrous 2019 presidential campaign and subsequent DEI promotion to be Joe Biden's vice-presidential nominee, the "system" is the only reason she got as far as she did. Her own political skills and abilities wouldn't have met with positive outcomes running for county dog catcher, let alone national office. The "system" she claims is broken just anointed her with their nomination of their party for president, and they sank nearly a billion dollars in an attempt to get her elected. And it's still not enough. The "system" let her down.
Hillary Rodham Clinton has all but pickled herself bathing in sour grapes since 2016, and Thursday night's whine-fest by Harris sounded the the onset of yet another season of a losing Democratic candidate blaming everyone else but herself for their defeat.
By taking a pass on running for governor of California as a Democrat, something that would result in a 20-point win almost automatically, she's using a 'broken system' as her stated reason. If California's system is broken, who broke it, exactly? I thought Democrats run everything here. I've been reliably told that Gavin Newsom was going to be the gold standard nationally for how the country should be run. Just look to California as the example, Newsom keeps telling the rest of the country. But Kamala Harris, a Democrat who used advantages of originating multiple campaigns in the easiest big state in the Union for that party's nominee to win, is now saying everything is broken?
It sounds to me like she's not at all convinced that she'd win a crowded jungle primary against former Biden HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, California Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis, state Comptroller Betty Yee, former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and former Batgirl/Congresswoman Katie Porter. She not only might not take the top slot, she might not even finish third. That would be devastating.
CNN's Edward-Isaac Devore, before her announcement she wasn't running, ran a story on how California Democrats were not-so-quietly concerned about the baggage that would follow another Harris campaign.
Back to the Colbert interview, much will be made of her opting out statement, such that it was. But there were other parts of the interview that raised eyebrows.
The SCOTUS dissents of Sotomayor and Jackson are brilliant, she thinks? In the birthright citizenship case, CASA, Amy Coney Barrett authored the 6-3 decision that torpedoed district court judges issuing nationwide injunctions. And after reading the dissent by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Barrett responded in one of the more sharp rebuttals ever read in decisions.
Because analyzing the governing statute involves boring ‘legalese,’ [Jackson] seeks to answer ‘a far more basic question of enormous practical significance: May a federal court in the United States of America order the Executive to follow the law?’...
“In other words, it is unnecessary to consider whether Congress has constrained the Judiciary; what matters is how the Judiciary may constrain the Executive. Justice Jackson would do well to heed her own admonition: ‘Everyone, from the President on down, is bound by law,'”...
“That goes for judges too.”
Harris thinks Jackson is the bee's knees. All but the most ideological left-leaning Con Law professors in the country believe Jackson is a lightweight.
Now we get to the part about Kamala Harris, prophetess.
She didn't see the capitulation coming. The 'unspecified guardians' didn't keep Trump from winning, and aren't stopping him now. My questions for Harris, questions Colbert would never imagine asking, because he's a sycophant, not an interviewer or a comedian, would be what guardians? Who didn't stop him and by what means could they have stopped him? From what actions should they have stopped him doing? Securing the border? Enforcing immigration law? Deporting those with legal deportation orders? Restructuring and reducing the size of the federal government? Restructuring international trade deals in order to stimulate economic growth, which is now at 3%? Negotiating the end of wars? Isn't that supposed to be something the head of the Article II branch has included in their portfolio?
Nope, we just have the unstated deep state that rolled over and let Trump do what he wanted. That's the system that broke. Where's the John Brennan's, the James Comey's, the Jim Clapper's now? Where are the committee members and Senators to throw monkey wrenches into everything Trump does? Where's the courts to stand up? Where's the media?
I, of course, would suggest that the left did not capitulate at all. They've opposed Donald Trump at every turn. The problem, of course, is that in order to do that, they've had to take the 20% side of a whole host of 80-20% issues that cut against them with the American people. Donald Trump won, and continues to win in spite of non-stop headwinds from elected Democrats and fanned by allies in media. Why? Because the issues are winning issues, and Trump has learned from his four years in the wilderness how to to do this job effectively. He's made promises, kept those promises, and is delivering real results for the American people. Harris just can't bring herself to accept that 1) the country rejected her vision soundly, and 2) it looks like that decision paid off.
Chris Cuomo, hardly anyone's idea of a conservative, hosted mostly Democratic callers on his News Nation show. One right after another, he fielded Democrats who have been surprised and delighted with what Trump has been able to do.
"I'm not too proud to say that I [was] wrong about Trump. I'm a proud Democrat and he's done a lot of things..."
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) August 1, 2025
"How so?"
"Immigration. I'm happy about what's happening with immigration. I thought the stock market would tank—and I'm pretty happy with my 401(k)." pic.twitter.com/n4f4Mq8rMC
Earlier in the week, Cuomo gave Trump an A grade after his first six months, and filmed himself stuck in traffic admitting he's been wrong about most everything. This actually is the way forward for Democrats like Harris who wish for a second bite at the apple. Instead, with Kamala Harris, we get this.
Try not to cringe.
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 1, 2025
Kamala Harris spirals into a full cackle outburst while trying, and failing, to explain what her book is actually about:
“There's a lot of personal stuff in the book. I mean, poor Dougie.”
*cackle* x 10
“Dougie kind of dropped the ball at my big… pic.twitter.com/b6xMXKIdZK
So what was in the Green Room - Chardonnay? A nice cab? I'm doubting she's much of a merlot girl, but who knows? It very well could have been a Sauv Blanc, because you can pound that down very quickly in volume, I'm told. All I know is if she had appeared on an actual comedy show, the band would have played an instrumental version of Red, Red Wine by UB40 as her walk-up music. Subtle, but funny. Missed opportunity.
Fortunately for the country, Harris appearances on the talk show circuit, while annoying, sad, and pathetic, is much more preferable than facing four years of a Harris administration, or worse, another few years of this guy.
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