Ever since Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, following Biden's withdrawal, many in the media have been clamoring for her to do interviews and press conferences.
Today Harris and Walz were interviewed by CNN's Dana Bash in a Georgia diner. Hopefully this will put an end to the claims that Harris is scared to answer tough questions. She handled everything Bash threw at her with calm competence, as did Walz.
Given how often Trump changes his policy positions, it's amusing that Bash thought it was worthwhile to ask Harris about her 2019 statement that she'd ban fracking if elected president. Harris has made it clear that she no longer feels this way. End of story.
People change their minds all the time. It's absurd to hold politicians to a higher standard. Heck, it's a good thing when someone reconsiders a belief that they once held. That's called learning, not flip-flopping.
Harris smartly said that it's her values that are important, and those haven't changed. She still strongly supports efforts to combat global warming. She just has come to believe that it is possible to allow fracking and still reduce greenhouse gas emissions markedly.
Regarding border policies, Harris correctly noted that Biden put her in charge of finding ways to reduce migration from the northernmost central America countries. She was never the "border czar" as Trump and Vance wrongly call her.
I realize that Harris couldn't say this, though I suspect she thinks it, but the attempts to tie her to Biden's border policies ignore the plain fact that she has been vice-president since January 2021, not president. Vice-presidents do whatever the president asks them to do. They don't set policies on their own.
Walz was only asked a few questions, as befits his potential vice-president status. Bash asked him a "making a mountain out of a molehill" question about the one time he misspoke and said that he carried weapons in war in the course of speaking about weapons of war, assault weapons. (Walz never saw combat.)
This is not only no big deal, it isn't even a tiny deal. I'm confident that it wouldn't be difficult to find clips of Dana Bash saying things that were wrong because she misspoke.
Thankfully, Bash didn't fall for the made-up scandal being pushed by J.D. Vance about Walz retiring as a master sergeant even though he achieved the rank of command sergeant major, but didn't complete coursework needed to retire with that rank. Walz was a command sergeant major before he retired, then retired as a master sergeant. Again, no big deal.
Probably Trump is afraid to be interviewed on CNN because he prefers getting softball questions from Fox News. But maybe I'm wrong.
Hope so, because I look forward to Dana Bash, or whoever, asking Trump why he used to support abortion rights but now opposes them. Or why he contributed to Harris' campaign to become California's Attorney General if she's such a horrible person.
And Trump needs to be asked why his campaign used video taken at Arlington National Cemetery in a TikTok post after cemetery officials told him before his visit there that it was illegal to use photos or videos for the purpose of a political campaign. This shows way more disrespect for the military than Walz misspeaking once about carrying weapons in war.
Great questions for Kamala Harris:
When will you stop massacring babies and children?
Posted by: manjit | August 31, 2024 at 12:54 AM