The Media Research Center played work-the-refs with CNN’s Dana Bash before her interview with Kamala Harris, even demanding that Bash ask her its laundry list of biased questions – then pouted when Bash largely ignored them. From there, the MRC whined that non-right-wing media refused to hate the interview as much as it does. Alex Christy huffed in an Aug. 30 post:
After Vice President Kamala Harris’s Thursday interview with CNN, the cast of MSNBC’s 11th Hour could not defend her against accusations of flip-flopping on issues such as fracking, so instead they decided to portray such reversals as “clever” while wondering if she is the victim of a double standard.
Guest host and former Harris spokeswoman Symone Sanders-Townsend teed up a clip of the interview, “Vice President Kamala Harris has been accused—not even accused, like, it is a fact that she said a number of things in 2020, in her 2020 campaign that she has now shifted her stance on, and she responded to a number of those criticisms tonight. Watch this.”
[…]Even CNN’s fact-checker, Daniel Dale, was unimpressed by such alleged cleverness. As vice president, Harris supports whatever Joe Biden supports. Citing what she did as vice president does not answer questions on how she would govern as president in her own right.
Chief Trump pillow-fluffer Curtis Houck whined in another post that day:
On Friday, the “Big Three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC opened their flagship morning news shows by rhetorically gallivanting over Thursday night’s CNN exclusive interview with Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Governor Tim Walz (D-MN) (after having not done an interview since President Biden was forced out).
ABC’s Good Morning America had their chief regime pillow fluffer, Mary Bruce, again do her best North Korean news lady impression, gushing over Harris as “methodical” and “defending her record with President Biden” in her first “in-depth interview…since she was catapulted to the top of the ticket”.
[…]Bruce even admitted Harris remained vague about what she’d do as president, but the Biden-Harris tool put a positive spin on it: “Harris is surging in the polls, narrowly leading Donald Trump nationally. Asked what she would do on day one, Harris light on specifics.”
Bruce added Harris was “adamant in defending her and Biden’s record on the economy, but concede[d]” that, in Harris’s words, “[t]here is more work to do.”
On NBC’s Today, co-host Craig Melvin also praised Bash by saying Harris “faced some tough questions about her change in policy positions.”
[…]Finally, CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil began the show by describing Harris as having “defended her evolving positions on a range of issues and responded to attacks from former President Donald Trump.”
“Look, this interview comes as voters are trying to learn more about Harris in this compressed timeframe. So, she explained some of her shifting positions,” said White House and campaign correspondent Ed O’Keefe.
Mark Finkelstein groused in his daily hate-watch of “Morning Joe”:
Was that David Plouffe? Brian Fallon? Maybe the Second Gentleman himself? Surely no one from outside Kamala Harris’ inner campaign circle would have had the chutzpah to use the term “soaring rhetoric” to describe Kamala Harris’ pedestrian-at-best performance during her CNN interview last night!
But no! It was actually Jeremy Peters, an MSNBC contributor and New York Times “reporter” on today’s Morning Joe–which tells you all you need to know about the New York Times, MSNBC, and the liberal media at large.
“She’s really positioned herself in a way that should scare Republicans,” chirped Peters.”What you see, I think, is the kind of soaring rhetoric from her about uniting the country that a lot of people are really hungry for.”
It doesn’t matter that it’s remarkably phony — remember, Joe Biden also campaigned as a uniter, and then as president compared Republicans to Jim Crow segregationists. He said “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
Tim Graham grumbled in his Aug. 30 podcast:
Kamala Harris finally submitted to an interview after 39 days as Biden’s sudden replacement. Pundits said this long-running boycott of the press raised the stakes of this interview, but Bash wasn’t chosen because she would punish Harris for her avoidance. Bash made a few attempts to capture her slippery moves away from radical stands she took during her failed campaign in 2019. But Harris was allowed broad freedom to explain it away.
Jorge Bonilla sat through it all and has thoughts. Harris was largely allowed to talk at length with what were probably well-rehearsed answers she had worked on for days. It could be seen as preparation for the September 10 debate.
Bash’s worst question was the open-ended one about President Biden’s mental decline: “Right after the debate, you insisted that President Biden is extraordinarily strong. Given where we are now, do you have any regrets about what you told the American people?” Harris was able to say she had no regrets and then tout Biden and his record.
Afterward, CNN analyst Scott Jennings responded: “I also thought it was interesting that she didn’t take any responsibility at the end for telling the American people that Joe Biden was fine and he was strong when we all know that’s not true. That’s why he’s out of the race and she’s still standing by the idea he was fine and he’s strong and then he’s fine today. Nobody believes that…”
Graham didn’t disclose that Jennings is a biased right-wing activist, so it’s not a surprise he would bash Harris and Biden.
The next day, Graham lost it when a CNN commentator gave away the MRC’s game — that the only reason they’re bashing the interview is because Harris did well:
On their regular “Week In Politics” chat on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, host Scott Simon asked NPR senior Washington correspondent Ron Elving how Kamala Harris and Tim Walz performed in their sit-down CNN interview. Elving said you knew they were fine because conservatives trashed CNN and Dana Bash after it aired.
SCOTT SIMON: Vice President Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, gave their first broadcast interview since they became the Democratic ticket. I – you know, you have to ask it like you’re asking a theater critic. How do you think they did?
RON ELVING: I’d say they held their own, and you knew they had because the conservative media sphere erupted in criticism of the interview and CNN and the host of the show, Dana Bash.
The only snippet NPR aired was Harris saying “my values have not changed” on the fracking question. Elving said that was natural. It’s “what candidates say when they’ve switched positions,” a “classic shift” when she joined Joe Biden’s ticket. “Now she’s on her own, and she’s sticking with the Biden view and saying she’s learned a lot about growing the green economy without banning fracking.”
[…]Simon wrapped up the segment by asking how important the ABC presidential debate would be on September 10. Elving said the ratings will be enormous, much larger than the Dana Bash interview (with six million viewers). He predicted Trump would be a bully, but Harris could be close to victory: “Trump can be counted on to do all he can to bulldoze Harris off the stage. But if she holds her ground, she’ll be closer than ever to being the first woman president.”
Graham will never come out and admit that his job and that of his MRC underlings are being paid to keep Harris from winning — because if he did, it would jeopardize the MRC’s nonprofit status. He also won’t admit that Elving was quite correct in his evaluation of right-wing attacks on CNN over the interview.