The Media Research Center is fixated on building the narrative that Kamala Harris’ media interviews are all loaded with softball questions (while remaining silent about all the softball interviews Donald Trump does in the right-wing bubble). Alex Christy forwarded that narrative in a Sept. 14 post:
After having ABC debate moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir on her side for Tuesday night’s debate, Vice President Kamala Harris sat down with Brian Taff of ABC’s Philadelphia affiliate for an even softer interview that should lead the national media to demand she face more tough questioning.
Taff asked five questions, none of which could reasonably be described as challenging. For his first question, he asked, “When we talk about bringing down prices and making life more affordable for people, what are one or two specific things that you have in mind for that?”
Harris gave a long, rambling answer that ultimately led to her promoting some proposed small business tax deductions and plans for housing construction.
[…]To be fair to 6abc, they also interviewed Trump back in April, and that was not exactly a hardball interview either, but on Sunday, his running mate JD Vance will do three hostile Sunday show interviews where he surely won’t be able to go on about how much he loves Sunday dinner.
Where is the demand that Tim Walz do the same? Walz limits himself to the Rachel Maddow Show and Harris does interviews like this. Before the one with Dana Bash, her most recent interview was a T-ball session with Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC before President Biden dropped out and before that, with Jimmy Kimmel.
By contrast, the MRC fawned over Trump’s fluffy interview with Elon Musk, praising him for repeating the correct right-wing talking points. Christy didn’t mention that.
Alex Christy devoted a Sept. 21 post to bashing Stephanie Ruhle for pointing out that Harris doesn’t necessarily need to do a bunch of serious interviews because she’s running against Donald Trump:
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle revealed herself to be a dues-paying member of Journalists Against Journalism on Friday’s episode of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. During an argument with New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, Ruhle argued that demanding Harris do a serious interview was akin to asking for “Nirvana.”
Stephens may not be anybody’s definition of a Trump supporter, but that doesn’t mean he is just going to fall in line behind Harris, “It’s not too much to ask, ‘Kamala, say, are you for a Palestinian state if Hamas is going to run that state? Yes or no?’”
A confused Ruhle retorted, “And let’s say you don’t like her answer, are you going to vote for Donald Trump?”
As Stephens reiterated that he won’t, Ruhle rolled on, “Kamala Harris is not running for perfect, she’s running against Trump. We have two choices, and so there are some things you might not know her answer to, and in 2024, unlike 2016 for a lot of the American people, we know exactly what Trump will do, who he is, and the kind of threat he is to democracy, so it’s unclear to me how there can be an informed—”
Stephens interrupted, “Stephanie, the problem people have with Kamala is we don’t know her answer to anything, okay?”
Ruhle shot back, “But you know his answer to everything,” to which Stephens replied that isn’t good enough, “And that’s why I would never vote for him, and people shouldn’t vote for him, but people are also expected to have some idea of what the program is of the person you’re supposed to vote for. You’re just not supposed to say, ‘well, you have to vote for Y because X is this, that, and the other.’”
That’s especially true for someone like Ruhle, who has her own news show and whose job it is to inform the public. As Stephens explained, “Let’s find out a little bit more and I don’t think it’s a lot to ask her to sit down for a real interview as opposed to a puff piece in which she describes her feelings of growing up in Oakland with nice lawns.”
Ruhle replied, “Then, I would just say to that, when you move to Nirvana, give me your real estate broker’s number and I’ll be your next-door neighbor. We don’t live there!”
A few days later, Ruhle did an interview with Harris, which the MRC predictably panned. Jorge Bonilla huffed:
Days after suggesting that it wasn’t necessary for Kamala Harris to sit down for an interview and answer policy questions, MSNBC tasked their resident late-night AWFUL, Stephanie Ruhle, with doing precisely that. Sitting down with Harris and attempting to get substantive answers on policy. She got half the job done: the sitting down part.
The interview opens with a plea, from Ruhle to Harris, to give the voters what amounts to a policy elevator pitch. Harris responded with a word salad that ended with affordable housing.
Ruhle took another pass at the question, at which point Harris fired off a succession of talking points against Trump:
As if Trump doesn’t fill his interview with his preferred anti-Harris talking points. Bonilla concluded by whining:
As I mentioned at the outset, Ruhle accomplished half her mission, which was to ask questions. Some friendly, some with a slight degree of difficulty, but there was never a serious challenge of anything Harris said. Unfortunately for viewers expecting clarity, Harris didn’t offer a substantive answer beyond her talking point set-pieces. That much was evident from the very first question, wherein Harris worked “dreams”, “aspirations”, and “middle class” into her very first answer. It went downhill from there.
As anticipated, the sitting vice president was the proud recipient of a warm tongue bath from the Regimiest of all Regime Media outlets, which will no doubt he hailed as a groundbreaking interview by the usual crowd of Regime propagandists.
Bonilla never demands that Fox News or Newsmax ask serious questions of Trump.
MRC chief ran to Fox Business to whine about the interview:
On Thursday morning, MRC founder and president Brent Bozell laid into the latest softball-laden Harris interview while appearing on FBN’s Varney and Co.
The show’s titular host, Stuart Varney, began with a clip of President Biden’s cozy Wednesday appearance on ABC’s The View. “Softball questions, no serious questions, no follow-ups — but does it work with voters?” he inquired.
Bozell led off with a nonsensical quote from co-host Whoopi Goldberg to Biden: “You stepped up to lead us out of a dark and very divisive era, and became one of the most substantial Presidents in the past half-century.”
“That wasn’t a question, that was a statement,” Bozell argued, adding: “The day my children put me in an old folks home, and they tell me that I’ve got to be put away, they’re going to be just as nice to me. And this is really what’s going on with Joe Biden. They feel sorry for the man… They’re trying to make him feel nice now that he’s been put into a closet.”
Bozell then turned his sights on MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, who conducted the Wednesday interview with Vice President Harris: “Where Kamala Harris is concerned, she was interviewed by a reporter who a week ago said on the Bill Maher show that [Harris] did not have to take any policy questions, and she did not need to do interviews. And that reporter went on to call Donald Trump a threat to democracy.”
“She allowed no policy positions to be given, and she allowed Kamala Harris to attack Donald Trump,” he concluded. “So, no, there’s nothing serious going on.”
Bozell seems to have forgotten that he did an seriousness-free softball interview with Ron DeSantis in a desperate attempt to boost his presidential campaign, so he’s hardly the best person to criticize Ruhle’s interview.
Curtis Houck whined about other coverage of the interview in a Sept. 26 post:
MSNBC’s ethically challenged 11th Hour host Stephanie Ruhle scored a softball-filled interview Wednesday with Vice President Kamala Harris and, despite even Ruhle admitting Harris didn’t really answer her questions, the “Big Three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC rushed to celebrate Harris “drilling down on her vision” and “detailing plans” they hope will lead to voters trusting her more on the economy.
While the interview aired on NBC’s sister network MSNBC, ABC had to use Good Morning America to fawn over their Dear Leader. Co-host Michael Strahan sounded like a Harris surrogate in his tease: “Vice President Harris laying out her vision for the economy, detailing plans to boost the middle class as she gains ground on former President Trump on the top issue for voters.”
Christy returned to grouse that Ruhle defended the interview:
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle stopped by Morning Joe on Friday to react to criticisms that she conducted a softball interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. Ruhle dismissed the idea, joking that “all press is good press” before getting more serious and claiming that criticizing Harris for using “platitudes” is unfair because she’s a politician and that’s just what politicians do.
Co-host Joe Scarborough declared, “I noticed that [Fox News’s] Howie Kurtz was saying you launched a softball interview with Kamala Harris, and you seem to be the running banner for about 30 minutes about how what a softball interview this interview was. Of course, nothing, nothing like Donald Trump and Sean Hannity.”
As Hannity himself said, he’s a commentator with an agenda, but Ruhle fancies herself as a straight-talking business and economics reporter, so unless Ruhle wants to be viewed as a liberal version of Hannity, the standard should be higher for her.
In fact, Hannity has previously claimed to be a journalist, and his Fox News bosses consider him to be one — and he failed to mention his boss’ softball interview with DeSantis.