New media crutch for Kamala Harris: a Town Hall with predetermined questions

Kamala Harris's repeated missteps in her media appearances, despite the fact that she has almost always gone to friendly territory, have forced the sympathetic, like-minded press to intensify their efforts to limit the damage to the vice president´s image. From partisan moderators (ABC’s debate against Donald Trump) to heavily edited broadcasts that conceal her flaws (60 Minutes, CBS), the latest example was a Town Hall with pre-scripted questions where the audience was barred from participating.

The left, turned to Kamala Harris

Except for the presidential debate, in which she had the inestimable help of the -supposed- moderators who acted as two more Democrats, each of Kamala's media appearances has resulted in a loss of votes for her. The vice president, who still hasn't given a press conference for nearly 100 days, began admitting interviews from like-minded media in the final stretch of her campaign, with a considerable lead over her rival according to the polls, and because her refusal to appear on television was beginning to be conspicuous, and even criticized by the left-wing press.

To do so, she chose the media most comfortable and closest to her, but the results have not been as expected. The voters have severely penalized her contradictions, her eagerness to try not to say anything that shows her radical ideology while trying to pass herself off as a moderate, her attempts to claim credit for the -scarce- accomplishments of the Biden-Harris Administration while trying to make believe that she had nothing to do with its mistakes. She even tried to whitewash her responsibility as border czar, something many journalists close to the Blue Party swallowed.

Debate with Trump, turning point in Kamala Harris' campaign

The media turning point of the campaign was the debate against Trump. The candidate, far from acknowledging that the true winners of the debate were the partisan ABC moderators who were constantly pointing fingers at Trump while supporting Harris' fallacies, really believed that she had been the winner, so she decided to start frequenting the sets of big media and influencers on social networks.

However, every appearance by her or her candidate for vice president Tim Walz, was a drain on votes in the polls. In fact, far from being a help, Walz has further weighed down the Democratic Party's electoral projections, especially after his disastrous debate before J.D. Vance, his Republican counterpart.

Kamala Harris' disastrous interview on Fox

Worried, Harris went so far as to agree to be interviewed on Fox by Bret Baier to try to reverse the situation. The result? A veritable disaster. Despite her team's attempts to bottle and cut the conversation short -also arriving late and gesturing to cut-, Kamala had enough time to do several of her now celebrated word salads and lose her temper in front of the correct and polite Baier. The campaign tried to justify the gaffe by accusing the conservative network of staging "an ambush."

Shortly thereafter, would come the announcement that Harris would be attending the 60 Minutes set on CBS. The network promoted the event with excerpts of Kamala talking about the border, and one of the cuts included a word salad of her own. Surprisingly, when the program aired this part did not appear, which sparked a campaign on networks -in which Trump himself participated- demanding the broadcast of the full interview.

A Town Hall with pre-arranged questions

With her support at an all-time low, and projections from reputable pollsters like Nate Silver and media outlets like The Hill and The Economist placing Trump as the winner of the election, its latest Town Hall in Michigan with Liz Cheney didn't go according to plan either. Everything seemed under control until an attendee wanted to do what attendees at such an event do: ask a question. To her surprise - and Harris' embarrassment - moderator Maria Shriver informed the woman that the questions were already predetermined beforehand.