Kamala Harris Still Dodging Questions and Discussions

On Thursday, August 29, Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz sat for their first time on-the-record interview since Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democrat presidential candidate. Harris was chosen by the same senior Democrat party leaders who executed the bloodless White House coup, including former President Barack Obama, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, with the open encouragement of the liberal mainstream media.

Even though rank and file Democrats were given no opportunity to choose Biden’s replacement on the ticket, they welcomed Harris with a great sense of relief, despite her obvious political vulnerabilities. It enabled them to escape, under Biden, what appeared to be an inevitable landslide victory for the Republicans in November, and to re-unite the various factions of their party, based upon race and gender, and hatred of religious faith and the American heritage, behind Harris as their presidential candidate.

Undoubtedly, Harris’ ascension to the top of the ticket has imparted newfound energy to the Democratic Party, fueled by feelings of relief and renewed optimism, but very little in the way of crucial details about her proposed policies as president. Addressing that lack of information was ostensibly the purpose of the CNN interview, conducted by its veteran political reporter, Dana Bash, but unfortunately it provided very little new information to help still undecided voters evaluate Harris’ credentials to serve as president.

One of Harris’ vulnerabilities as a presidential candidate is her record as a San Francisco-style liberal Democrat. In 2019, when she ran for the Democrat presidential nomination, she was rated as the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, even more than Bernie Sanders, an avowed democrat socialist. She also publicly supported at that time the radical socialist-inspired Green New Deal progressive proposals that are far to the left of most American voters.

But the greatest vulnerability for Harris is her role over the past four years as Biden’s loyal vice president. Not only did Harris support Biden’s free-spending, inflation-inducing economic policies, she also cast the crucial tie-breaking votes in a 50-50 Senate that turned them into law, including Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid relief American Rescue Plan in 2021, and the cynically misnamed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

HARRIS WAS BIDEN’S BORDER CZAR WHETHER OR NOT SHE ADMITS IT

Also, despite desperate administration attempts to re-write recent history, Biden did appoint Harris in 2021 as his “border czar,” as was widely proclaimed in the mainstream media at the time, without White House objection. But she did nothing to try to enforce federal laws against the rising tidal wave of illegal crossings at the Mexican border. She concentrated instead solely on diplomatic efforts to reduce factors encouraging illegal migration from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. By her inaction, ignoring her constitutional duty to enforce federal immigration laws, Harris is at least partially responsible for permitting more than 10 million people from all over the world to breach America’s borders illegally, and with impunity, creating crisis conditions not only in the border states, but also in “sanctuary cities” across the country.

Finally, Harris supported Biden’s weak foreign policies, including his shameful abandonment of U.S. allies in Afghanistan, which probably led to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and his inconsistent policy towards Israel, by proclaiming U.S. support for its right to defend itself in the wake of Hamas’ October 7 attack, while at the same time pressuring Israel not to wage all-out war against Hamas’ last stronghold in Gaza, and withholding the heavy weapons its needs to destroy Hamas as a threat to Israel’s security once and for all.

In her public statements since replacing Biden as the Democrat presidential candidate, Harris has embraced Biden’s self-contradictory approach to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Harris proclaims that Israel must have the right to defend itself. But in a not-so-subtle wink and a nod to the antisemitic progressive wing of her party, Harris unfairly holds Israel alone responsible for the fact that “far too many Palestinian civilians have been killed,” due to Hamas’ immoral strategy of using them as human shields.

As a Wall Street Journal editorial points out, “(Harris) is the least-known candidate in modern history. It’s possible her campaign will figure this is the last interview she needs to do from here to November. . .

HARRIS IS RUNNING AS THE DEMOCRATS’ MYSTERY CANDIDATE

“The Harris campaign’s bet is that the Vice President can soar to victory on a cloud of general promises, platitudes and ‘joy.’ The campaign is betting the press won’t care. And they’re betting that Mr. Trump won’t do the homework and doesn’t have the discipline and focus to expose any of this in debate or consistently on the stump. So far, it’s been a winning wager. . .

But, the editorial noted, “Harris remains vulnerable on her past political views, her recent flip-flops, the Biden-Harris record in office, and what appears to be her implicit endorsement of the (failed) Biden economic and national-security policies.”

The CNN interview was Harris’ first effort that since she replaced Joe Biden as the Democrat presidential candidate a month ago to explain, in her own words, her dramatic policy shifts towards the political center on everything from controlling inflation to fighting climate change to bringing illegal immigration at the southern border under control.

During the interview, Harris was asked the crucial question: why she has changed so many of her positions. CNN reporter Bash posed it this way: “How should voters look at some of the changes that you’ve made? Is it because you have more experience now and you’ve learned more about the information? Is it because you were running for president in a Democratic primary?”

HARRIS FUDGED HER ANSWERS WITH PLATITUDES AND GENERALITIES

But Harris never really answered that question. Instead, she fudged it with a statement so deliberately vague that it revealed nothing. “I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed,” she said. But Harris failed to make any effort to clearly define exactly what those values are, or to explain in comprehensible and specific terms what her vision is for America’s future under her leadership.

Ever since party leaders handed her the nomination after dumping President Biden, Harris and her campaign have been highly reluctant to explain to voters in any detail who she is, what her “values” are, and how she would lead the nation for the next four years if she is elected president.

But during that interview, Harris clearly failed to meet that challenge. The pre-taped interview turned out to be a disappointment for voters who were seeking clarity about what they could expect from a Harris-Walz administration. Kamala Harris said her ‘values’ haven’t changed, but she failed to give the American people a clear description of what those values really are, or even any solid proof that they really exist at all.

Last week’s CNN interview only took place because of growing pressure from the media on the Biden campaign, based upon criticism that she was hiding from the voters in much the same way that Biden did in 2020 using the pandemic as an excuse, as well as during the current campaign, before the truth about his sad decline was revealed for all the world to see during his June 27 debate with Trump.

HOW FAR CAN HARRIS GET WITH A STRATEGY OF MEDIA AVOIDANCE?

As Washington Times commentator Tim Murtaugh explained, “If you’re a candidate for president of the United States and you avoid the media for a week or two, you can reasonably call it a strategy. If you avoid them for almost six weeks, it’s a problem. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, has a problem, even after she was finally shamed into breaking down and talking to CNN.”

But Murtaugh also believes that Harris’ Democrat political handlers “have a different concern: She’s a complete phony.

“Her policy positions, many of which have been part of her public record for decades, are radically out of step with those of most Americans, and trying to renounce them (isn’t) remotely believable. . .

“Now, she is masquerading as an immigration hawk. . . (even though) she has been quite clear in her views on illegal border crossing and has said multiple times that she does not believe it should be a crime. Today, of course, that tune has changed. . .

“She has consistently supported the ‘defund the police’ movement but is now desperately trying to walk that back. . .

“She stole former President Donald Trump’s proposal to stop taxing tips for service industry workers. . .

“Harris proposed and then quickly retreated from a (clearly impractical) plan to implement price controls on groceries after facing (a) widespread backlash,” Murtaugh noted.

HARRIS’ TRICKY POLITICAL BALANCING ACT

Harris and her campaign have refrained from putting any detailed policy positions on her website, because they are deeply uncomfortable about exposing her to penetrating questions about exactly where she stands on many issues. That is because she is trying to strike a tricky political balance. She is embracing the alleged successes of the Biden administration on such issues as job creation and bringing down the rate of inflation, while at the same time trying to distance herself from the shortcomings of the Biden administration on many major issues, beginning with inflation and its open border policies, as perceived, according to all of the polls, by a majority of the voters.

THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION THAT HARRIS IS TRYING TO AVOID

The single most damaging political question that vice president is trying to avoid is why Biden-Harris administration ignored warnings by respected liberal economists, such as Larry Summers, that their free-spending policies would drive the rate of inflation to a 40-year high of 9.1%. These persistently high and still rising prices for life’s most basic essentials, including food, housing and energy. are still breaking the budgets of tens of millions of working and lower middle class American households, whose wage increases have not yet caught up with their skyrocketing cost of living.

While Harris during her interview did try to demonstrate empathy for American families suffering from the painful impact of high grocery prices, she was not able to explain why they had risen so high under the Biden-Harris administration.

Inflation has also driven up interest rates, putting the classic American dream of home ownership beyond reach for a whole generation of young families. But while Harris tries to pretend that she had nothing to do with these problems, Biden White House officials keep reminding reporters that, as Biden’s vice president, she has been “an integral partner” and owns “the comprehensive whole” of the administration’s sorry economic record over the last four years.

HARRIS IS ONLY PRETENDING TO HAVE VALUES

The Wall Street Journal editorial board has also suggested that Harris’ practiced answer to all questions about her policy changes, that “my values have not changed,” was designed to “be read any way you want. We take it as a studied wink to her left flank that she’s on their side but can’t say so clearly until she’s elected.”

Harris’ vague and unsatisfying answers throughout last week’s CNN interview only deepened the growing suspicion that she really doesn’t have any values that she cares deeply about. Instead, Harris is acting like the ultimate opportunist, relentlessly driven by her political ambitions to do anything and say anything that will help get her elected president in November.

Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate, Ohio Republican Senator J.D. Vance has called Harris a political “chameleon,” who is only pretending to move her views toward the political center in her quest to become the first female president.

TRUMP AGREES THAT HARRIS’ RADICAL LIBERAL VALUES HAVE NOT CHANGED

Shortly after the CNN interview was broadcast, Donald Trump weighed in with his own take on Harris’ performance. “I just saw Comrade Kamala Harris’ answer to a very weakly-phrased question, a question that was put in more as a matter of defense than curiosity, but her answer rambled incoherently, and declared her ‘values haven’t changed’.”

“On that, I agree,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social media platform. “Her values haven’t changed. The border is going to remain open, not closed. There will be free healthcare for illegal aliens, sanctuary cities, no cash bail, gun confiscation, zero fracking, a ban on gasoline-powered cars, private healthcare will be abolished, a 70-80% (income) tax rate will be put in place, and she will defund the police. America will become a WASTELAND!”

Trump also wrote, “I look so forward to debating Comrade Kamala Harris and exposing her for the fraud she is. Harris has changed every one of her long-held positions on everything. America will never allow an election-weaponizing Marxist to be president of the U.S.”

The Trump campaign also issued a statement with detailed critique of Harris’ allocation of time to the various issues during her CNN interview. It said, “Kamala spoke for just over 16 minutes and didn’t even address the crime crisis in this nation. She spent a mere 3 minutes and 25 seconds talking about the economy and 2 minutes and 36 seconds talking about immigration.”

Meanwhile, in her campaign rhetoric, Harris has tried to treat Trump as if he is the incumbent and is responsible for the nation’s current problems. But in fact, Trump is no longer in power, while Harris has been the second highest official of the government which has been running this country for the past four years.

In trying to cast herself as a transformational candidate, whenever she talks about change, Harris simply ignores the failed record of the Biden administration or pretends that it doesn’t exist.

HARRIS IS DENYING TRUMP’S ABILITY TO INSPIRE HIS SUPPORTERS

During the CNN interview she said, “I’m talking about an era that started about a decade ago,” when Donald Trump first announced in 2015 that he was running for president.

During the Trump era, Harris said, “there is some suggestion — warped, I believe it to be — that the measure of the strength of a leader is who you beat down, instead of where I believe most Americans are, which is to believe that the true measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you lift up.”

“That’s what’s at stake, as much as any other detail that we could discuss, in this election,” Harris said. Her statement ignores the fact that Trump’s remarkable political success, enabling him to overcome tremendous opposition, has largely been based upon his unique ability to inspire the loyalty of his followers with his promise to lift them up by “Making America Great Again.”

Harris and the Democrats insist that when he was president, Trump instituted policies that the country cannot now afford to return to. However, the polls indicate that, by a wide margin, most Americans feel that they were better off when Trump was in the White House, especially before the Covid pandemic hit, than they are today after four years of Biden-Harris rule.

EVEN HER OWN CAMPAIGN DOES NOT TRUST HARRIS TO SPEAK ON HER OWN

A telltale indication of the Harris campaign’s distrust in their new presidential candidate’s ability to give unscripted answers, even to predictable questions from a sympathetic CNN reporter, was its insistence that she be accompanied during the interview by her vice presidential running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, presumably so that he could quickly intervene should one of Harris’ characteristic word-salad answers once again wander into embarrassing incoherence.

As it turned out, Harris had no need for Walz’s intervention, in large part because CNN reporter Bash mostly failed to respond to Harris’ deliberately vague answers with appropriate follow-up questions to pin down her positions on a variety of sensitive issues.

For example, Harris tried to dodge a question from Bash about whether she believes Bidenomics has been successful by repeating a well-rehearsed talking-point list of dubious administration achievements, including a boast that it has finally brought the rate of inflation down to under 3%. But Bash then failed to ask the Harris the obvious follow-up questions: Why did inflation reach 9.1% on her watch, and was it due, as many economists believe, to the unnecessary excess spending in the Biden-Harris American Rescue Plan that passed Congress in March 2021 entirely with Democrat support?

With regard to Harris’ current economic proposals, Bash failed to ask about her widely criticized proposals to impose nationwide price controls on grocery stores and apartment rents and an Elizabeth Warren-style wealth tax on unrealized capital gains.

Bash also failed to press Harris about how she would handle the Israel-Hamas conflict if they were still fighting in January, when she would take office if she wins the election. Harris was also not asked about her policy towards the ongoing threats to Israel, the U.S. and our allies in the region from Iran and the ongoing attacks by Iran’s terrorist proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.

VP CANDIDATE WALZ HAS HIS OWN CREDIBILITY PROBLEMS

Governor Walz had his own problems during the interview trying to give a believable explanation for his embarrassing tendency to embellish his 24-year military record with the Army National Guard. Walz was quick to claim that, “I certainly own my mistakes when I make them,” but his effort to dismiss those misstatements as innocent grammatical errors was clearly disingenuous.

Bash also failed to ask Walz to explain his own sudden political transformation from a moderate Democrat congressman representing a usually Republican-voting Minnesota district to the most liberal “woke” state governor in the country.

Bash did ask Harris about fracking, a highly productive technology for extracting oil from large shale formations in Texas, North Dakota and the key presidential battleground state of Pennsylvania, Bash asked why Harris should now be believed when promises to permit fracking after she promised to ban the practice during a CNN town hall when she first ran for president in 2019. At that time Harris declared, “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.”

HARRIS’ FLIP-FLOP ON FRACKING

But when Bash cited that quote in her interview, and then asked Harris, “Do you still want to ban fracking?” Harris answered “No. And I made that clear (as Biden’s running mate) on the debate stage in 2020. That I would not ban fracking. As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking,” Harris responded, without any admission of error when she took the opposite position in the past.

When Bash pressed the point further, Harris replied, “In 2020, I made very clear where I stand. We are in 2024 and I’ve not changed that position, nor will I going forward. I kept my word, and I will keep my word. . .

“I have always believed. . . that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time. . .

“We did that with the Inflation Reduction Act. We have set goals for the United States of America, and by extension the globe, around when we should meet certain standards for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (a 40% reduction by 2030 compared to 2005 levels). . .

“Well, let’s be clear,” she then told Bash. “My values have not changed. I believe it is very important that we take seriously what we must do to guard against what is a clear crisis in terms of the climate. . .

“And to do that, we can do what we have accomplished thus far… That tells me… from my experience as vice president, we can do it without banning fracking. In fact, Dana… I cast the tie-breaking vote (to pass the Inflation Reduction Act) that actually increased leases for fracking, yeah, as vice president.”

When asked whether any new scientific data influenced her shift in position on fracking, Harris simply stated as a fact, without citing any sources, “What I have seen is that we can. . . grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.”

While many climate change activists would argue that fracking is also unacceptable because it pollutes water sources and harm wildlife, Harris still insists, with the straight face of a well-practiced liar, that despite her politically expedient willingness to tolerate the practice, “my (original San Francisco liberal) values have not changed.”

HARRIS IS STILL A CLIMATE CHANGE RADICAL

Harris was also not deterred by the lack of consistency in her current positions on energy and climate change. While she has disavowed her previous public pledge to impose a nationwide fracking ban to win votes in Pennsylvania, she is still on record supporting the Biden administration’s war on America’s fossil fuel industry, while falsely accusing the oil companies of price gouging. Since the day that Biden and Harris took office, their policies have been undermining America’s energy independence, to the benefit of our enemies, Russia and Iran. They have also endangered national security by draining America’s strategic petroleum reserve for their own political benefit, by artificially lowering the cost of gas at the pump.

When Harris said during last week’s CNN interview that the country needs to stick by the Biden administration’s accelerated timetables to reach its targets for reducing carbon emissions, she was voicing her support for its impractical green energy policies, such as a proposed ban on the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035, and the drive to remove gas-powered stoves from the kitchens in American homes.

But because reporter Bash failed to ask the appropriate follow up questions, Harris was able to escape the interview without having to answer tough questions about the serious problems facing the Biden-Harris green energy agenda and its unrealistic deadlines. These include green energy’s high costs and lack of reliability, insufficient generating and grid capacity to meet the fast-growing power demands of artificial intelligence, the failing efforts, despite generous IRA funding, to create a nationwide charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, as well as the fading popularity of EV’s among new car buyers.

HARRIS’ OPEN BORDERS POLICY FLIP FLOP

Bash also asked Harris whether she still believed that crossing the U.S. border illegally should be decriminalized, as she has said in the past. In 2017, when she was a U.S. senator from California, Harris stated flatly, “An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.”

Harris has a long history of criticizing the mission of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. In a 2018 interview, then-Senator Harris told MSNBC, “I think there’s no question that we’ve got to critically re-examine ICE and its role and the way that it is being administered and the work it is doing. And we need to probably think about starting from scratch (In other words, doing away with the current border law enforcement apparatus entirely).”

When she ran for president in 2019, Harris promised to shut down the ICE detention centers for illegal immigrants on “day one” of her presidency.

But in last week’s interview with CNN, Harris again adopted the opposite stance, self-righteously demanding a restoration of law and order at our nation’s borders. Harris declared, “I believe there should be consequences. We have laws that have to be followed and enforced that address and deal with people who cross our border illegally.”

Ignoring her record over the past three years in overseeing Biden’s disastrous open border policies, and before that, as a U.S. senator who wanted to do away with federal immigration law enforcement, Harris boasted about her record as the attorney general of California from 2010 to 2017. “And let’s be clear,” she said. “In this race, I’m the only person who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations who traffic in guns, drugs, and human beings. I’m the only person in this race who actually served a border state as attorney general to enforce our laws, and I would enforce our laws as president going forward, I recognize the problem.”

Unfortunately, Bash failed to ask Harris the logical follow-up question, why she failed to “recognize the problem” during the past three and a half years when she was Biden’s “border czar” and presumably had the authority to do something about it. Instead, during that period, Harris made only one brief visit to the border and confined her immigration efforts to working with Mexico and three Central American nations to address the “root causes” of illegal immigration. She now seeks to excuse that failure by claiming that “was (all I was) asked to do by the president.”

In fact, Harris was an integral part of the Biden administration’s deliberate effort during its first year in office to dismantle many of the Trump administration’s border policies that had succeeded in sharply reducing the flow of illegal immigrants across the southern border. Using only his power to issue executive orders, Biden halted the construction of the barrier Trump was building along the US-Mexico border and revoked Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while awaiting a US court decision on their application, the vast majority of which are eventually turned down.

HARRIS FAILED TO ADDRESS THE “ROOT CAUSES” OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

Federal immigration data shows that Harris’ efforts to address the “root causes” of illegal border-crossing by migrants from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras resulted in only a marginal decrease in the flow from those countries. Meanwhile, the total number of illegal crossings, fueled by large numbers of migrants from other countries around the world, surged to nearly 2.5 million in fiscal 2023. Instead of discouraging illegal border crossings, the Biden-Harris administration knowingly adopted policies which encouraged them, such as permitting the migrants to stay in the US to await asylum proceedings, and making them eligible for work permits after six months.

The vice president has tried to shift the blame for the sorry record of the Harris-Biden administration on immigration onto former President Trump for persuading congressional Republicans to oppose a weak compromise border security bill earlier this year sponsored by Oklahoma Senator James Lankford, a conservative Republican.

“Because he believed that it would not have helped him politically, he told his folks in Congress, don’t put it forward,” Harris said. He killed. . . a border security bill that would have put 1,500 more agents on the border.” She also said in answer to a follow-up question from Bash that, as

president, she would not only push Congress to pass it, “I would make sure that it would come to my desk and I would sign it.”

However, Harris’ claim that Trump’s interference with passage of the compromise border security bill prevented the Biden administration from solving this country’s immigration problems was belied by the fact that illegal border crossings have plunged since June. That was when Biden, under intense pressure over the influx of illegal immigrants from the Democrat mayors of “sanctuary cities” across the country, reinstated by executive order several of the Trump-era border security policies that Biden had cancelled when he first took office.

Harris was also able to get away during the interview with repeating tired Democrat campaign platitudes about her plans to “support and strengthen the middle class” and finding “a new way forward” for America. Some of her proposals included an increase the federal child tax credit to the generous temporary levels it reached for one year thanks to Biden’s American Rescue Plan, and a new $6000 credit for the parents of a newborn baby. She has also proposed a $25,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers needing help to come up with a down payment. She also said that implementing all of this would be part of her agenda on Day One in the White House.

WHY DIDN’T HARRIS PURSUE HER GOALS AS VICE PRESIDENT?

That prompted Bash to ask the obvious follow-up question. “The steps that you’re talking about now, why haven’t you done them already (during the past three-and-a-half years she’s been vice president)?”

Harris’ answer was that first she and Biden “had to (help America) recover as an economy,” because Trump’s alleged mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic had created an economic crisis that she and Biden inherited when they entered office. “We have done that,” Harris claimed, pointing to the recent reduction in the rate of inflation, and the provision of the IRA act now going into effect capping the annual out-of-pocket costs of the most expensive drugs for Medicare recipients. But according to a Pew Research survey taken in May, most Americans disagrees with that Biden administration claims of success, with just 23% of them saying that they believe the economy is now in good shape.

TRUMP’S UPDATE ON RONALD REAGAN’S SUCCESSFUL DEBATE QUESTION

The response of the Trump campaign to Harris’ claim during the CNN interview that her administration succeeded in reviving the American economy is an updated version of the simple but politically devastating question that Ronald Reagan asked the viewers of his presidential debate with Jimmy Carter during the week before the 1980 election. It was, “Are you better off today than you were four years ago? The answer to that question by a large majority of voters was a resounding “No!” As a result, a few days later, Reagan won a landslide popular vote and Electoral College victory over Carter.

Similarly, Trump and his campaign argue, and most Americans agree that, thanks to Trump’s tax cutting and regulation reducing policies, during his presidency the economy was generating more new jobs and economic opportunities, especially for previously disadvantaged minority and working-class Americans, than at any time in recent years, until it was interrupted by the Covid shutdowns.

Many political strategists in both parties still believe that, despite Harris’ current surge in the polls, Trump could deliver the same result that Reagan achieved from the upcoming September 10 debate with Harris, but only if he stays on message and is able to keep the voters focused on their economic pain due to Biden-Harris administration policies.

HARRIS’ CONTEMPT FOR THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

Meanwhile, RealClearPolitics commentator Joe Klein notes in an opinion piece provocatively entitled “Pablum to the People,” that the Harris’ campaign had advertised in advance of the interview that she had changed her previous positions on fracking and open borders. But Harris and her handlers appear to believe that she is not under any obligation to explain to the American people why her positions changed, and, nevertheless, she is still able to claim somehow that her “values haven’t changed.”

Klein also expressed deep disappointment at interviewer Dana Bash’s lack of curiosity about the details of Harris’ new positions. “I would have liked a better sense of how her mind works,” Klein wrote. He wanted Bash to ask any good reporter’s follow-up questions such as, “Why did you support decriminalizing the border in 2019—and not now? What does your vision of our energy future now include—and for how long are fossil fuels part of it?”

Klein wanted Bash to ask “a peripheral, but unexpected, question like have recent advances in nuclear power made it safer? Should it be part of our energy future?”

WHY THE CNN INTERVIEW FAILED

He notes that such questions would have been very useful because they “might have forced (Harris) to think on her feet. (But) she was never pressed. She never experienced a moment of discomfort” That is why the CNN interview failed to achieve its primary function of revealing something new and important about Harris to most of the American people who still know very little about her.

In an interview with veteran Fox News commentator Sean Hannity, conservative columnist Joe Concha also harshly criticized Dana Bash’s interview with Harris, and listed important questions that she should have asked the vice president but didn’t:

Question 1: You support taxing unrealized gains on capital gains. Some critics say that will tank the stock market. Explain why they’re wrong.

Question 2: You have voiced your support for sanctuary cities. Why do you believe they work?

Question 3: You support free health care for those who enter the country illegally. How does that get paid for and why should those here illegally receive the same benefits as those in the country legally?

Question 4: You support cash-free bail laws at the time crime is driving citizens out of blue cities from New York to Chicago to Minneapolis to San Francisco. Why do you think cash-free bail laws are best for the community?

THE QUESTIONS HARRIS REFUSED TO ANSWER

To avoid the risk of antagonizing moderate voters, Harris refused to even consider answering questions about the divisive issues of racial and gender identity driving woke progressive Democrat activists, or express her opinion about the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs which are serving as an excuse for the widespread practice of systematic antisemitism on college campuses and across American society today.

When Bash asked Harris about former President Donald Trump’s public questioning of her mixed Asian-African racial identity, she just shrugged and replied, “Same old, tired playbook. Next question, please.”

When Bash then asked her in disbelief, “That’s it?” Harris laughed and then confirmed, “That’s it.”

Harris defended her dubious claim soon after Biden’s disastrous performance in his June 27 debate with Trump that he was still fit to serve another four-year term as president. She also said once again during her CNN interview that Biden still “has the intelligence, the commitment, and the judgement and disposition that I think the American people rightly deserve in their president.”

HARRIS HAS BECOME A BETTER POLITICIAN THAN SHE USED TO BE

As CNN political commentator Stephen Collinson observed, during her CNN interview Harris preferred to talk about “sweeping themes and aspirations rather than detailed policy blueprints, and declined to fully explain reversals on issues like immigration and energy. . . she was a more deft, disciplined and prepared political figure than she appeared in her short-lived bid for the 2020 Democratic nomination or in accident-prone moments early in her tenure as vice president.

“But Harris was elusive on what she would actually do as president. . . and sometimes straddling key issues to avoid painful choices that she’d face in the Oval Office. . .

“Harris (also) did not lay out a clear path for navigating treacherous politics to enact (her) plans. She also did not say how she’d pay for such programs.”

UNRAVELING HARRIS’ MYSTERY

But in the end, after the long awaited CNN interview, we still don’t very much than we did before about what kind of president Kamala Harris would be, or what her allegedly unchanged “values” really are, assuming that they exist at all.

Harris’ hidden nature reminds us of Winston Churchill’s famous 1939 definition of Soviet Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,” in reaction to communist dictator Joseph Stalin’s invasion of Poland at the start of World War II in Europe.

Will Donald Trump be able to unravel Harris’ mystery in their September 10 debate as effectively as he exposed Joe Biden’s failings in their June 27 debate? Much of the world will be watching closely in order to find out.