Vice President Kamala Harris gave her first solo interview Wednesday on cable news as the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, and failed to answer questions even in a friendly interview by MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle.
Ruhle — who faced criticism for comments Friday in which she had defended Ruhle from having to face questions about her policies — asked Harris pointed questions and even fact-checked some of her repeated talking points.
When Harris tried to claim, falsely — as she has in the past — that “Donald Trump left us with the worst economy since the Great Depression” (it was, in fact, growing when he left office), Ruhle noted: “It was during COVID and employment was so high because we shut down the government, we shut down the country.” Harris then said Trump lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs before the pandemic, which is also false: manufacturing jobs rose by 450,000.
Ruhle also fact-checked Harris’s claim — also a staple of Joe Biden’s economic speeches — that Trump’s 2017 tax cuts only benefited the rich and corporations. “He didn’t just cut corporate taxes, he cut individual taxes,” Ruhle observed.
The MSNBC interviewer also pointed out that Harris’s plans to expand the child tax credit or to offer assistance with mortgage down payments could not be done without approval from Congress, and the help of Republicans. “If you can’t raise corporate taxes, or if the GOP takes control of the senate, where do you get the money to do that? Do you still go forward with those plans and borrow?” As Ruhle later observed, Harris did not want to answer at all.
Harris seemed thrown by Ruhle’s often mild questions. When Ruhle asked Harris,”How do you go after price gouging without implementing price controls?” the vice president was completely stumped, and simply dodged. “Yes, I’m going to go after them,” she repeated, aiming at companies that exploit consumers, leaving the question unanswered.
At one point, Harris made the odd observation, on the high cost of living, “Gone is the day of everyone thinking they could actually live the American dream.” It was almost an indictment of the four years she had been in office. When Ruhle pointed out that housing was often scarce because of local regulations and restrictions, Harris immediately agreed, failing to note that her own home state is one of the worst offenders, and that she has doing nothing about it.
Ruhle did her best to reassure Harris that she was, in fact, on her side.
When she asked Harris about whether she had actually worked at McDonald’s, a laughing Harris replied that she had. Ruhle did not follow up and ask the obvious question that skeptical conservatives have been asking: Which one?
But nevertheless, she persisted with other, substantive questions. On tariffs, for example, she challenged Harris, who opposes Trump’s tariff policies. “But tariffs aren’t unique to President Trump,” the MSNBC anchor said. “President Biden has tariffs in place. He’s actually looking to potentially implement more. Where do you come out on, is there a good tariff, a bad tariff?” Harris was stumped again, attacking Trump’s proposed tariffs for being “across-the-board.”
Harris concluded her answer by mocking Trump:
He’s not serious about how he thinks about some of these issues. And one must be serious, and have a plan, and a real plan, that’s not just about some talking point ending in an exclamation at a political rally, but actually putting the thought into what will be the return on the investment? what will be the economic impact on everyday people?
Many viewers — even MSNBC’s loyal Democratic audience — may think that description applies to Harris, who failed to explain her economic plans to a sympathetic interviewer, and often resorted to talking points, or simple evasion.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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