Comedian and podcast host Kareem Rahma admitted that an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris before the election was so bad, so awkward, that he decided not to air it in part because he feared being blamed for her loss.
Rahma, a Muslim influencer who hosts the popular internet talk show, “Subway Takes,” was approached by the Harris campaign and offered to conduct interviews with the candidate and her running mate, Tim Walz.
The show is designed for guests—typically on the subway—to deliver “hot takes” about particular common pet peeves or topics. It was no doubt a move to portray the incredibly uninspiring Harris as relatable.
It failed. Miserably.
In a clip posted to TikTok by Steve Bertoni, assistant managing editor of the “Forbes Top Creators Show,” Rahma explains further details on why the interview was a disaster. (The clip was part of a full interview conducted in late March, but went viral over the past couple of days.)
RELATED: Bacon-Gate – Kamala Harris Just Royally Screwed Up an Interview With a Muslim Influencer
Rahma explained that he was super-excited about the opportunity to interview Kamala Harris and felt it would, at the very least, afford him the opportunity to tell his daughter he met the potential future President.
“What happened with Kamala? asks Bertoni.
At this point, you can almost see the wind coming out of the comedian’s sails. Even his recollection appears to show him in full cringe mode.
“Her take was really confusing and weird and not good,” Rahma replied. “And so, mutually agreed that we shouldn’t publish it. And I got lucky because I didn’t want to be blamed for her losing.”
“Her take was that bad?” Bertoni responded disbelievingly.
The host expounded upon that, saying Harris’s segment was “really, really bad” and “didn’t make any sense.”
‘Really, really bad and doesn’t make any sense’ could have practically been the campaign slogan for Harris-Walz.
How does one screw up a ‘hot takes’ type of interview, in which you simply riff on things that you either hate or love? The entire ordeal is a microcosm of the whole Harris campaign as they desperately tried to make her seem human.
My RedState colleague Bonchie provided more detail on the lost interview, which The New York Times briefly touched on in an interview with Rahma exactly one day before the election. And …
- It was a mess.
- She refused to talk about the war between Israel and Hamas.
- Harris initially was to be “taking a stand against removing one’s shoes on airplanes.”
- She mixed it up once the interview began, taking a stand on “bacon as a spice.”
- When that was visibly upsetting to the Muslim host, she pivoted again to declaring her love of anchovies on pizza.
At one point, Rahma paused the interview and begged Harris’s team to switch back to the airplane topic, noting the bacon take was a dumb suggestion and the anchovies may have been worse.
He eventually concluded the interview, saying with an uncomfortable laugh, “Well. I’m 100 percent unsure on both of those.”
The Harris campaign requested a reshoot of the segment, but Rahma declined. And he never published the material he already had on file.
Bonchie had the most precise analysis of what had happened. How Kamala could have fumbled such an easy interview.
“She’s a cyborg,” he wrote. “Harris was pieced together by scientists using bolts and duct tape. If she wasn’t, she’d have been able to have a normal discussion like a human being about something not deeply offensive to the person interviewing her.”
One of the biggest reasons Harris failed to resonate with the American people is that she couldn’t – could not – be genuine in any situation. Everything was fake. She made Hillary Clinton seem less robotic by comparison.
Perhaps if they had done a hot take on little yellow school buses and/or Venn diagrams, she would have been in her element.
Every single day, here at RedState, we will stand up and FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT against the radical left and deliver the conservative reporting our readers deserve.
Help us continue to tell the truth about the Trump administration and its major wins. Join RedState VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership.
