Crooked Media, a Darling of the Trump ‘Resistance,’ Faces Liberal Ire for Off-the-Rails Interview with Harris Campaign Staff

The founders of Crooked Media — the liberal news and commentary outlet that became a mainstay of “the resistance” during the first Trump administration and after — are facing a tsunami of criticism from ideological allies and fellow Democrats following an interview they conducted with Vice President Harris’s senior campaign staff. Many said the outlet allowed Ms. Harris’s top advisors to simply brush off criticism of the campaign they ran. On Tuesday, Crooked Media released an exclusive interview with Ms. Harris’s top aides on their Pod Save America podcast feed. The interviewees included campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon, principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks, and senior advisors Stephanie Cutter and David Plouffe. The interview was billed as a roundtable discussion about where Ms. Harris fell short and how Democrats can move forward, though many supporters of Ms. Harris felt it was more an airing of grievances so that advisors could defend themselves from criticism. “It was disappointing at best,” liberal commentator and Democratic strategist Bakari Sellers said of the interview on CNN. “Hearing their lack of self-awareness, their lack of self-reflection, the inability to figure out a way in which you can win this race … Pod Save America themselves have been relatively disappointing because they were supposed to be our ecosystem to compete with the right-wing Ben Shapiros,” he added, referencing the conservative commentator and founder of the Daily Wire. “They’ve kind of become this cocoon themselves where challenging them becomes a hissy fit, back-and-forth,” Mr. Sellers added. President Kennedy’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, had some more colorful commentary for the Pod Save America hosts on Wednesday. “Pod save my LIMP D–K,” the Kennedy scion wrote on X. “If you don’t push back I WILL DO IT FOR YOU. Time for something new.” In another post, Mr. Schlossberg told one of Pod Save America’s hosts, Jon Favreau, to take “a permanent vacation.”One writer for the New York Times, Astead Herndon, criticized the Pod Save America hosts for allowing Ms. Harris’s senior staff to come on the show to defend their political choices and spending habits — with zero pushback — over the course of their 107-day campaign. Mr. Herndon said the interview was “a good ad for the importance of independent media.”Mr. Favreau shot back: “You ok? Have you not gotten enough credit for breaking the news that Joe Biden is old?” Mr. Herndon then replied, saying Crooked Media should feel “shame” for the interview. Others pointed out that it may have been malpractice by the Harris campaign itself to simply allow all of President Biden’s top political advisors — who demanded he stay in the 2024 race up until the moment he dropped out in July — to stay in their same positions when Ms. Harris took over. “At no point is anyone asked ‘do you regret trying to keep Joe Biden in the race’ even though that was probably the most catastrophic decision of the campaign, and even though they talk about their efforts to do just that!” said a senior editor at The Nation, Jack Mirkinson. At one point in the sit-down with Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer, Ms. Cutter said the Harris camp had a difficult time navigating the politics of keeping Mr. Biden at arms length without angering his own staff. “We were trying to tell a story and give the impression that she was different without pointing to a specific issue,” Ms. Cutter said. “Imagine if we said: ‘Well, we would’ve taken this approach on the border.’ Imagine the round of stories coming out after that of people saying: ‘Well, she never said that in the meeting.’ … It wasn’t gonna give us what we needed because it wouldn’t have been a clean break.”A popular liberal writer at The Nation, Jeet Heer, responded to those comments saying it was political malpractice by Ms. Harris and her aides to not distance themselves from a deeply unpopular president while also allowing themselves to live in fear of retribution from the White House. “To be clear, what is being said here is that a clean break from Biden would have helped Harris but she didn’t out of loyalty to Biden and also because if she did Biden’s staff would have leaked against her. The question then is: why was loyalty to Joe F–ing Biden more important than winning the election?” Mr. Heer wrote.

Crooked Media, a Darling of the Trump ‘Resistance,’ Faces Liberal Ire for Off-the-Rails Interview with Harris Campaign Staff

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