Harris’s T-Ball Interview Foreshadows a Presidency of Platitudes and Little Press

Vice President Harris’s interview with the MSNBC reporter Stephanie Ruhle is being called softball, but that’s an injustice to athletes of the sport. When it comes to the press, Ms. Harris plays the easy setup known as T-ball and is speaking only to those who root, root, root for the home team.It was Ms. Harris’s first solo interview as a candidate. Her only other outing was an amiable dual appearance with Governor Walz a month ago on CNN. What’s emerging is a choice: One is the vice president, who speaks only to friends in the press — and on only rare occasionals; the other is President Trump, who talks so much that it’s often to his detriment.Friday on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Ms. Ruhle all but donned a jersey reading “Harris.” She bristled at the New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, who said that voters might want to see how Ms. Harris handles fastballs, spitballs, and changeups from a pitcher who isn’t looking to give her a walk to first base. “I don’t think it’s a lot to ask,” Mr. Stephens said, for Ms. Harris “to sit down for a real interview as opposed to a puff piece.” Ms. Ruhle cast the choice as between a “threat to democracy” and Ms. Harris. “There are some things you might not know her answer to,” Ms. Ruhle said, but “we know exactly what Trump will do.”Ms. Ruhle said that in “Nirvana,” Ms. Harris might answer questions, but “we don’t live there.” So it was no surprise that she lobbed balls with a gentle hand on Wednesday. She started by inviting Ms. Harris to deliver canned remarks on her policies. “For those who say these policies aren’t for me,” she asked, “what do you say to them?”Ms. Harris gave a familiar response. “I come from the middle class,” she said, and spoke of “dreams” and “aspirations,” noting that “not everyone, you know, gets handed stuff on a silver platter.” It’s her standard attack against Trump, as if she weren’t served up the presidential nomination in just such a manner.The second question came right across the plate, too. “Over the last four years,” Ms. Ruhle said, “there have been tremendous economic wins… But still, polling shows that more likely voters still think Donald Trump is better to handle the economy. Why do you think that is?”Ms. Harris said that it was “a challenge … reminding people of fact” and “that’s part of what I’m doing in this campaign, is to remind people.” The only burden to “remind” America of the past ought to be Trump’s, as Ms. Harris is now in office.Voters are aware of who’s setting economic policy every time they look at a grocery bill, but the vice president said nothing about inflation. In her telling, the source of rising costs is “price gouging” by corporations, not government spending on her watch.Trump was also the subject of a question on tariffs. Four times, Ms. Harris said the former president’s plans were not “serious,” which has emerged in recent years as the favorite pejorative of Washingtonians. She claimed Trump’s tariffs would amount to a “20 percent sales tax.”Why no such disaster materialized in his first term was left unasked, as was why the Biden-Harris Administration had kept some of Trump’s tariffs in place. In her next question, Ms. Ruhle parroted the term, saying Trump’s “plan is not serious.”Ms. Harris proposed raising the tax deduction for starting a small business from $5,000 to $50,000. As with her proposed $6,000 child tax credit, an individual must have the money to spend first. The plan puts the hand of government in the process, unlike a tax cut which never takes the money in the first place.For “anybody making less than $400,000 a year,” Ms. Harris said, “your taxes will not go up” and “taxes for 100 million Americans will actually be cut.” However, since she used the terms “tax cut” and “tax credit” interchangeably, the statements again begged for a follow-up that never came.Rather than asking Ms. Harris if she felt the need to offer proof of employment at McDonald’s, since the company has no record of her working there, Ms. Ruhle asked if she’d ever “served” at the chain. An anti-Trump premise was featured here, too. Ms. Ruhle noted that the former president raises the topic “almost every day.”The pair sang the McDonald’s jingle, laughed, and Ms. Harris opined about fast-food jobs. Asking if she would document that she’d worked there or respond to her opponent’s claim might have given voters a far more informative exchange.Remarking that Ms. Harris is visiting the southern border on Friday, Ms. Ruhle got another dig in at Trump. “Nobody is eating cats and dogs,” she said, “and I’m happy not to be talking about that,” even as she did. She then asked what Ms. Harris would “do for those communities that have taken in very, very many legal immigrants.”It’s people entering the country illegally that concerns voters. Ms. Ruhle’s question supposed that it’s only those following the law who are burdening the communities where they’re settling or being sent — often by the Biden-Harris Administration.Ms. Ruhle concluded by asking, “Can we trust you?” Ms. Harris said, “Yes.” Voters, though, doubt her word on taxes and other promises since she was the loudest voice insisting Mr. Biden was up to the job of running for reelection. A tougher interviewer might have prompted the vice president to make a case in defense of her honesty.Ms. Harris is seeking a path to victory that runs through T-ball games, but the Oval Office is the big leagues; if she gets there, she’ll have to step up to the plate. Better America finds out how she handles herself with a bat before pitchers are trying to strike her out for real.

Harris’s T-Ball Interview Foreshadows a Presidency of Platitudes and Little Press

Harris’s T-Ball Interview Foreshadows a Presidency of Platitudes and Little Press

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