We Ask: What Is WRONG With Kamala?

Have a look -- she didn't used to be this way

Oct 17, 2024

Seriously — what is wrong with our Vice President?

After seeing yet another video of Kamala Harris struggling to form a sentence after her teleprompter went out this past week, we have to ask this question. She has had so many cringe-worthy performances in front of a crowd it seems impossible to believe that she had some of the jobs that she had in the past.

However she obtained some of those positions, she still held them and appeared reasonably competent. She was the District Attorney of San Francisco, the Attorney General of California, a United States Senator, and the Vice President of the United States. How could she get away with holding those jobs when she cannot seem to express a simple sentence or formulate a coherent thought, never mind clearly articulating it?

In answer to that question, I took a look back at her former public appearances.

Exhibit A: As District Attorney of San Francisco, Harris was capable enough to speak for almost an hour about her reasons for getting into law enforcement and her vision for fighting crime in San Francisco:

Exhibit B: As Attorney General of California, Harris was able to sit in a town hall-style meeting and discuss cyber threats to businesses. Was she particularly knowledgeable? Not really. Was she able to talk her way through it anyway? Yes:

Exhibit C: As AG and DA, she led numerous press conferences, discussing the particulars of large-scale investigations. She was able to rattle off numbers, relate investigative steps taken, and articulate the importance of the case to the criminal justice system:

Exhibit D: Even as a U.S. Senator, she gave speeches that seemed to articulate her legislative theories and ideas for new laws, even on national television. Maybe we didn’t agree with many of them, but she appeared capable of defending them:

But more recently she seems to be slipping. And she is not old. She should not be having such difficulty.

Exhibit E: As Vice President she has had some doozies. Take this simple question from the press that she had to pawn off on the President of Poland:

It’s a question she should have anticipated in that forum: What is the United States going to do about the refugees from Ukraine? Yet she couldn’t answer it and kicks it to President Duda with the desperate refrain, “A friend in need is a friend indeed” (yes, she said that). She then gives her tagline cackle as the President of Poland gives a clear and articulate response without throwing the VP or US policy under the bus. Foreign leaders must be wondering what is wrong with America.

Now she is on the big stage as the Democrat Party nominee. But she seems to be vying for President Biden’s title as biggest gaffe machine in Washington.

Exhibits F and G:

Her word-salad answers in discarded clips from her 60 Minutes interview portray a person who is not capable of concise thought nor clear communication. Not a quality we are looking for in the leader of the free world.

What we at The Ops Desk want to know is, “What is the problem here?” Harris seems to be devolving before our eyes. Why has she gone from a reasonably competent public speaker to a cackling, incoherent mess? Why has she gone from leading press conferences to displaying a complete inability to answer softball questions?

That is the question we wish the press would ask. Is there a medical issue? A substance abuse problem? Perhaps simply just choking with the eyes of the world focused on your every word? There must be something there. No one can be this bad.

Welp — There Goes Another Institution

As we have detailed here in the past, an alarming lack of faith in U.S. government institutions has developed over the past few decades. The disturbing lack of transparency and failure to be a proper caretaker of the interests of the average citizen have damaged the federal government’s reputation in potentially permanent ways.

So where is this going?

As the saying goes, you lay down with dogs, you get fleas. The most obvious example of this is the corporate media, which may be signing its death warrant with the current election coverage. It is apparent to many that the left-leaning media is simply doing the bidding of the current administration.

The “ignore your lying eyes” crowd seems to be pulling out all the stops to ensure that we do not see a second Trump administration. Ethics, integrity, best practices, and hard work seem to be things of the past in major media outlets today. They simply repeat the talking points of their favorite press secretaries and call it news. Some outlets are even editing their own reportage to avoid hurting particular candidates.

They have also adopted the opacity of the government and party that they serve. This alarming trend is clearly visible at CBS News in recent days, and is the reason why government and corporate media are in a neck-and-neck race for least trusted institution in the United States. Currently only 31% of Americans have even a “fair amount” of trust in mass media. An astounding 36% have “no trust at all.”

CBS’s 60 Minutes, formerly one of the crown jewels of our news media, is the example-of-the-day in this race to irrelevancy.

(Hey, America — you just got back an hour each week)

Last week, 60 Minutes aired an interview with Kamala Harris. Billed as Harris’s first hard news interview, the show backfired both for Harris and CBS. First, 60 Minutes reporter Scott Pelley ran a 3-minute diatribe, railing against Donald Trump for cancelling his appearance on the once-venerable show. Pelley pointed out that all presidential candidates have appeared on the show since the 1960’s, and essentially called Trump a coward. Maybe Trump saw the plastic on the floor and knew it would be a hit.

Trump is used to confrontational interviews. Perhaps he knew this would be something else entirely.

If the interview with Kamala was any metric, it looks like Trump was right. It was conducted by Bill Whitaker, and did feature some intelligent and important questions. What’s more, Harris appeared to handle them with surprising competence.

But then came the slip-up: A video of a question about the administration’s relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu with an entirely different answer aired on CBS’s Face the Nation.

This was not an over-edit or a carefully crafted clipping. It appeared to be a completely separate answer.

Maybe it was a clip from a different question. Maybe they allowed her to “try again”. Who knows? It certainly did not appear to conform to journalistic standards.

In our eyes, and the eyes of many journalists with the old-fashioned notion of “standards,” this appeared to be a major scandal. But perhaps there was a reasonable answer?

Apparently not, because 60 Minutes went silent on the controversy. Which seems to only confirm their guilt.

Um, CBS: There is no pleading the 5th in journalism.

It got worse. Former CBS staffers demanded answers. Still silence.

Perhaps someone at the network with some integrity will release the raw tapes (unlikely, as we are sure everyone at CBS holds the same opinion on the upcoming election). They seem to have learned from the Biden Administration’s press office. CBS is giving us the mushroom treatment – keeping us in the dark and feeding us sh*t.

Perhaps the bigger story here is the response from the other corporate media outlets. There is supposed to be competition among these networks, right? Shouldn’t NBC, ABC, CNN, etc, have leapt on this controversy to improve their standing in the network wars?

They didn’t make a peep.

It just proves the collusion amongst the media elites to ensure a Democrat wins the presidency. It seems in 60 Minutes, another American institution has lost the faith of the citizenry and is no longer relevant. No one should be watching that program and expecting honesty. This was a death knell for that show. The entire corporate media is not far behind.

Kamala & Bret Baier

Paul chimes in now with a late addition, re: Kamala’s interview on Fox News (Paul’s employer, to be clear):

Trump is not the one beginning to sink in the polls — Kamala is. So it was on her to shine at this interview and change minds — maybe even make a grab for the middle to gain the “Undecideds” out there. She did not manage that.
She has rarely — perhaps never — faced a journalist who would not sit still for the empty calories of her word salads. Clearly, it angered her.
She simply won’t answer questions. Somewhere in her team, the decision was made not to play to win, but to just SURVIVE — and count on animus towards Trump to provide a narrow victory. But you can’t suddenly decide to engage with the press — and then not answer questions. That’s the worst of both worlds.
You can be charming, and deflect questions (see Clinton, Bill); you can be charmless, but declare your positions and stand your ground. But you should do one of the two. Being prickly AND not answering the questions is, again, the worst of both worlds. She managed this.

Of course, the social media pundits on the left are declaring it “an ambush” or alternately, “a home run” (note that it can’t really be both). But they have to know that clips of her simply not answering questions are going to circulate up until Election Day.

She needed some version of a win. She needed to persuade, to present a vision of an America that is better than the last four years. Apparently, she and her team do not believe she needs to do that.

It is not out of the realm of possibility that they are right. We will know, soon enough.

But if she does win, at some point: even CBS will expect her to answer questions occasionally, won’t they?

Won’t they?