Excerpt from the Washington Examiner, January 13, 2022
It’s rare that someone can say so much and so little simultaneously. Harris apparently believes the best strategy for responding to a question for which she obviously has not prepared is to keep talking, regardless of the words that come out of her mouth. It's as if she believes a series of non sequiturs and disjointed inside thoughts will lead her eventually to a coherent response.
Journalist Craig Melvin asked the vice president whether it’s time for the White House to change up its strategy for battling the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is Harris’s verbatim response: “It is time for us to do what we have been doing and that time is every day. Every day it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down.”
What possible excuse is there for this comical, nonsensical answer?
Earlier, CBS News’s Margaret Brennan asked Harris, “Was it wrong to consider inflation transitory? I mean, these price spikes seem like they're going to be with us for a while.”
The vice president’s answer was typically meandering and senseless: “We have to address the fact that we have got to deal with the fact that folks are paying for gas, paying for groceries, and are — [they] need solutions to it. So let's talk about that,” said Harris. “Short-term solution includes what we need to do around the supply chain, right? So, we went to the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Savannah, Georgia, and said, 'Hey, guys, no more five days a week, eight hours a day; 24/7, let's move the products because people need their product — they need what they need.' We're dealing with it in terms of the long term. And that's about what we need to do to pass Build Back Better. It strengthens our economy. What do we need to do in terms of bringing down the cost of living, right?”
It's really like an episode of Veep. At least she didn't misspell "potato" — then we'd have a real crisis of credibility on our hands.
In December, radio host Charlamagne tha God asked Harris a simple rhetorical question: Who is really the president? Joe Biden or Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia?
"Come on, Charlamagne. It's Joe Biden," the vice president said. "No, no, no, no. No. No. No. No. It's Joe Biden. And don't start talking like a Republican about asking whether or not he's president.”
She added, “And it’s Joe B-, Joe B-, it’s Joe Biden, and I’m vice president, and my name is Kamala Harris.”
Harris then did her thing, launching into a long-winded response containing no substance whatsoever.
“And the reality is because we are in office, we do the things like the child tax credit, which is going to reduce black child poverty by 50%," she said. "On track to do that. We do things that are about saying that our Department of Justice is going to do these investigations and require that we end chokeholds and have body cameras. It is the work of saying we're going to get lead out of pipes and paint because our babies are suffering because of that. It is the work of saying people who ride public transit deserve the same kind of dignity that anybody else does. So, let's improve that system. It is the work of saying that we have got to bring down prescription drug costs.”
NBC News’s Lester Holt asked her, “Do you have any plans to visit the border?”
This was not a trick question or a trap, but she fell right into it and still hasn't freed herself.
“I, at some point, you know. We are going to the border," she said. "We’ve been to the border. So, this whole, this whole, this whole thing about the border. We’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border.”
“You haven’t been to the border,” Holt clarified.
“And I haven’t been to Europe,” responded the White House official responsible for tackling the U.S. immigration crisis, adding nervously, “I don’t understand the point that you’re making.”