I'm dubious, CBS

60 Minutes obfuscates to hide their own manipulation of their Kamala Harris interview.  It sure took them a long time to craft a response. And it sure was carefully worded. So it sure doesn't make them look any less deceptive.

And the spin continues

The spin has spun out of control, from the disastrous Kamala Harris interview, right on into some recent polling. Here's a discussion on why it's a lot of crap.

It was a train wreck

I by far, most often, am a glass half full person but more often than I'd like, I revert to a glass half empty mentality. This is particularly true when it comes to politics and sports. "We're gonna lose." kicks in way faster than it should.  And most of the time it's unwarranted pessimism. 

Last night as Brett Baier was interviewing Kamala Harris on Fox News, it kicked in.  He started off soft.  I get it, he was setting her up for harder questions later. Interviews should be polite even if the subject matter is contentious. But last night with that start to the interview, I turned it off. He was going to softball her, I just knew it.  Waste of time. Fox is helping Kamala.  

Normally I would force my way through it but not last night.  This morning I watched it.  I'll happily admit it; I was wrong to doubt Kamala's ability to implode just as badly as Let's Go Brandon. It was indeed a train wreck.  Not the interview, just for the vapid candidate that is Kamala Harris.

Do I think it hurt Kamala Harris?  A little bit, yeah. Did it help her in any way?  Definitely not. I'm sure there are those who are spinning this as a win for Harris, just as I predicted yesterday.  But there were so many soft underbelly openings she left that even if Brett Baier didn't catch them all, others would. And sure enough, there have been no shortage of those noticing how badly she did.

For example, they're even commenting on the other side of the world:

What comes of desperation?

Rewriting this because somehow, most of my post was somehow deleted while I posting it. This is a much shorter version as I am not inclined to rewrite as much as I wrote previously, and to be honest, did not have any notes to work from. Below is my attempt to game theory out why Kamala Harris is going to be interviewed on Fox News.

Tomorrow on Fox News (Fox News!) Kamala Harris is going to sit down for an interview. This is very likely going to be her first, and only, real interview this election cycle. Why is this happening now? I have a few thoughts.

Wednesday— I’ll have an exclusive interview with Vice President Harris on #SpecialReport. pic.twitter.com/Ry63iNH4fW

— Bret Baier (@BretBaier) October 14, 2024

Kamala Harris would not be sitting for an interview with a 'hostile' Fox News unless her campaign knew the truth; she's losing. But what will come from this interview?  I see two ways the interview can go, and possible outcomes that result from that.  The first factor is whether or not Fox News asks her tough questions.

There's no guarantee that Fox News actually does ask Kamala Harris tough questions.  It's one thing to have journalistic standards and wanting to get answers to tough questions. But that's not all that motivates newsrooms. There's money, there's viewership, there's acceptance among peers and/or interviewees. None of these things should play into investigative reporting or interviews - but they do. Worse still; there's politics. Any of these could lead to Fox giving a softball interview to Harris. 

Money in the form of powerful advertisers with a lot of financial pull who might be pro-DEI, would not take kindly to Fox hammering Harris. Money drives business and alienating current and/or potential advertisers is not something Fox would want to do.  There are a lot of woke companies out there with a lot of money.

From a viewership perspective, while Fox will get eyeballs for the interview, an unduly hard interview might scare off potential disaffected centrist viewers who tuned in specifically for this and got hit with a meme; Fox is unfair and biased against Democrats. No viewership growth would come of it.  Conversely an even handed interview might grow viewership and be a better long run strategy. 

Fox has drifted towards the center since Rupert Murdoch handed off control to his children. They are far less conservative than their father. But there's also the idea of media acceptance.  Fox News, and Fox television in general has always been an outsider in the industry.  Playing along with CBS, NBC et. al. would go a long way to garnering not necessarily clout, but perhaps acceptance, within the industry.  We cannot pretend that such things do not matter to if not Fox, at least those who work there.

If Fox does take it easy on Harris, they will definitely lose viewers from those who currently watch it expecting fair and balanced at a minimum.  Remember, Kamala Harris has not faced anything other than controlled softball interviews so far. People want to see her face tough questions.  If she doesn't get them on Fox News, she will never get them. 

But this is not about Fox, it's about Harris. Another softball interview could easily work in Harris' favor; making her look tough for willing to go toe-to-toe with the 'enemy' and come out shining on the other end, having handled the questions with ease.  I know, I know, I laughed re-reading that myself.

Getting obviously softball questions on Fox could easily backfire too; it would show that she is only going places she knows are safe, and clearly had something lined up with Fox.  It would amplify the elites-agenda-versus-the-common-man notion that is clearly driving the election cycle.  That's not a good outcome for Harris or for Fox News.

All that said, Fox still could go tough on her, and they probably will to at least some extent. If they go too hard, it's a nasty look (but honestly, who cares? Look at what Trump has had to endure since 2015!). But if Fox goes tough but fair Harris could still do well (haha, okay not bloody likely) or get ruined.  If she gets ruined though, don't think the Democratic brain trust hasn't pre-planned for that outcome.

How hard would it be to paint Harris as a victim? "They went after her unfairly because she's a woman." "They went after her unfairly because she's black." "They weren't fact checked as they interviewed her, let us do that for you now." The list goes on. While Harris-as-victim is a really bad look for her if you are say named Putin, there are key voting blocks (women for example) who may feel sympathy as a result. A president should be tough enough to handle a rough ride.  If not, why are they president? Voters shouldn't matter as much as a leader who can take the tough shots and fight back for America and its people, but in an election year, voters matter a lot. 

There's one further possibility here; the back room Democrat elite know Harris has lost and they see no way out, so they are hanging her out to dry, now, while they can make a difference elsewhere. The cabal that runs the left, clearly knew Let's Go Brandon was many, many egg noodles short of a meal. They hid it for years.  When they knew they could no longer hide it, they concocted a plan to deal with him.  The Democrat elite are schemers; they put him out there to debate Trump so far ahead of the nomination, they knew they would have time to replace him with someone nobody voted for in the Democrat primaries. 

Protecting Democracy has always been the last thing on their minds, except maybe as a slogan. They want puppets. When their main puppet was full of holes, they discarded him and grabbed onto the next available option; Kamala Harris.  They are not protecting democracy in doing this; in fact it is the exact opposite.  It's Covid lockdowns all over again.  They're thinking we can get away with this because we own the news. 

What they actually are protecting is their club. Not democracy, not the American people, they are protecting their own grip on power. They want to ensure that the down-ballot impact of a feckless Kamala Harris doesn't affect the senate or congress, and leaves them open to a midterm rebound in 2026.  They have given their puppet one chance to do well, far enough out, so they can react.  A weak performance and you'll see every Democrat in a swing district or state, run from her so far and so fast it will make your head spin. 

After failing to fake a euphoria of joy for Harris, this is Democrat insiders' last best shot at changing the trajectory of the election, whether Harris does well or not. I strongly doubt it will make a positive difference for Harris, but I think the Democrats already know that themselves and no longer care.

Tim Pool interviews president Trump

Kudos to Tim Pool for pulling off this interview with president Trump. 

Megyn Kelly talks with president Trump

This is quite a different conversation than they would have had (or refused to have) in 2016. 

Milo reputation repair with Jordan Peterson

Jordan Peterson interviews Milo Yiannopoulos, a (former) conservative provocateur who was lambasted publicly for comments that he made in 2017 that unfortunately were exposed after some editing done to deliberately destroy his reputation and value as a conservative speaker. It would seem that it was done by the establishment Republican / anti-Trump faction of the conservative universe. Other conservatives did not come to his defense and the liberal media, obsessed with victimhood, did not treat him like they would other 'victims'. Milo, did not even see himself as a victim, he refused. Unfortunately as a result of this combination of factors, he became a media pariah.

Jordan Peterson, never one to shy away from controversy, interviews Milo in a way that almost is like a therapy session. The conversation is revealing and might actually help repair Milo's reputation. Peterson prefaces the interview with this:

I should start by saying that Milo is definitely now on the list of those who no one acceptable socially should ever speak to, which I suppose is one of the reasons why I’m talking to him. I want to know what happened to him over the last few years, in his words, and I don’t really give a damn if that’s politically incorrect. I also plan to post clips directly from this discussion on Facebook this week. We'll all see (all who are interested) what happens when that occurs.

Milo's a hard man to categorize. Part journalist, part performance artist, part agent provocateur, part comedian and wit, Yiannopoulos is a man of immense and complex self contradiction. He’s half-Greek and half-Irish, but is know as an Englishman to the Americans with whom he has communicated extensively. He’s gay, and Jewish by descent. He married to his long-term boyfriend, an African-American man, in Hawaii, in 2017, but faces frequent accusations of racism. He is—or was—strangely attractive to young American Republicans, and completed a successful and controversy-ridden tour of US universities in 2016-2017. For at least two years, he was one of the most well-known internet celebrities, let’s say, on the political front, and caused more uproar than any other single person that I can think of.

In my view, for what it’s worth, Milo was such a figure of inner contradiction and outer controversy that I believed his time was numbered. Nonetheless, the circumstances of his demise were unpredictable, I would say (and that’s in keeping with his apparent destiny). After revealing details of his early sexual experiences at the hands of a decades older priest, whom he refused to name, he stated that he was an active participant in the events, and that such occurrences were far more common (and far more consensual) than people were willing to admit. I don’t think he ever recovered from the controversy that those comments generated.

In case it has to be said, and no doubt it does, I believe that what happened to him was absolutely unforgivable, and it would seem that he has come to share that opinion. Our conversation centered mostly around these issues, which I believe to be of wide general relevance. Hence the video.

CPAC 2019 - An Interview with Maj Toure

Tucker Carlson interviews president Trump

Full interview.

Obama passionate about...interview techniques

You can sneak into the country illegally. That's okay. You can run the debt up to unsustainable levels - he'll sign off on that. You can talk down and denigrate your political opponents, also okay. Well, if you are a liberal at least. But don't, DON'T challenge the President in an interview.

New Sarah Palin interview

John Zeigler has a couple of great videos on Youtube, about how Obama got elected, and now a great interview with Sarah Palin.

I urge you to check out his site, he's doing some great work and interesting work. Below is the video from Youtube.



He's also posted some interesting commentary along with the video here.

So Oprah, how about that follow-up?

Looks like the criteria for that interview is in place...So now what?



I'm not holding my breath.




Hopefully Palin is too busy.