I’m still not quite over what happened yesterday morning on The View. Let’s take a small step back: Just recently, we’ve written about how the Trump campaign has clearly decided that their most potent line of attack against Kamala Harris is to tie her to Joe Biden and their Biden-Harris administration. With an electorate craving change and disillusioned with the direction of the country, Team Trump argues that she embodies a continuation of a failed and unpopular status quo. They have selected this as their central argument over other approaches, like going all-in on exploiting her extreme views and record. We also just published an analysis on how Democrats are worried about this very thing, with the Harris camp weighing more breaks from Biden over the home stretch of the campaign (I also argued that she hadn’t really offered any meaningful breaks from him yet). And then, amid the new, frantic Kamala ‘media blitz’ — likely fueled by Democratic concerns that she hasn’t been doing enough public campaigning, and that she’s not in a comfortable polling position — she waltzed into The View.
As opposed to, say, 60 Minutes, where Harris performed poorly, one could not imagine a friendlier setting than this daytime chat show. She was introduced as “the next President of the United States,” which is often a staple at a candidate’s own rallies, as opposed to media interviews. The studio audience of New York liberal women cheered their hearts out for her. The hosts of the show are all in her corner. But sometimes, the most harmful gaffes come within friendly, unguarded confines. One of the hosts, probably having seen reports about Harris wanting to put some daylight between herself and Biden, asked what she likely thought was a helpful question:
Utterly empty. Perhaps wondering if Harris had missed the opportunity she was being served on a silver platter, the host tried again. The follow-up question, which is Harris’ kryptonite, produced perhaps the most damaging exchange Harris’ handlers could have envisioned in their nightmares. And it was manna from heaven for the Trump campaign:
Harris, whose slogan is ‘a new way forward,’ confirmed that she is absolutely an unwavering extension of the Biden administration, so much so that she could not think of one single decision she would have made differently. Not one. The last four years, in her imagination, have been perfect. She thinks of the Afghanistan disgrace, the border crisis, the painful inflation, and everything else — and thinks to herself, ‘I’d do all of that, all over again. No changes.’ It’s a devastating admission. She could have said something like, ‘well I’m not here to Monday morning quarterback and second-guess President Biden, who has done so much for this country. When we had our disagreements, we hashed them out privately, and he made the ultimate call. I’m not in the business of airing that laundry or betraying that confidence, but what I will say is… and then pivoted off to whatever future-looking talking point she wanted. This would have sounded gracious, while also at least leaving the impression that they had disagreed on some matters of import, behind closed doors, while giving herself a built-in excuse not to reveal what they were.
But she didn’t do that. She stared off into the distance — apparently never having contemplated how to answer a question that is both essential to her own phony narrative, and is literally her opponent’s number one hit against her — and declared there is “not one thing” that she would have done differently, then bragged about how influential she’s been during the Biden-Harris years. I’m genuinely not sure Trump’s campaign could have scripted it better. Harris later muttered something about putting a Republican (a Cheney or Kinzinger, no doubt) in her cabinet, which is also something Barack Obama did and Bidenworld floated. Hardly some novel concept or breakthrough. Extraordinarily, hours after all of that, she was given yet another crack at the question by a sycophantic Stephen Colbert:
A meaningless word salad, devoid of anything helpful or insightful. She’s not physically the same human as Joe Biden, she assured us, and she’s inspired by Americans’ aspirations. Slow clap. She didn’t prepare for this screamingly obvious question ahead of her ‘blitz,’ then bungled it badly on The View, then evidently decided her non-responses were sufficient, and doubled down. She is not capable of better. She’s also not capable of adjusting properly to mistakes, as demonstrated by the substance of her answer. She believes the Biden-Harris record is blemish-free, and she believes her decision to say so is a good one. It’s jaw-dropping. It’s not a fatal soundbyte to her candidacy because we live in polarized times, and about 46 percent of the population will vote for her each major party nominee no matter what. She can still win, and is arguably, maybe the favorite. But as I said on television earlier, if the few remaining swing and undecided voters desire change over what they’ve been living through these last few years, her answer is devastating:
If the Trump campaign has a pulse, that clip will be up on the air in every battleground state and district, as soon as possible. Early voting is underway. Harris just made their closing argument for them. I’ll leave you with JD Vance jumping all over her comments, at a rally in Michigan:
