Of all the questions Vice President Kamala Harris could have been asked during her CNN interview, the one I wanted to hear the answer to the most - and the one I figured wouldn't get asked - was on the subject of her staunch defense of President Joe Biden after his disastrous June debate performance.
Though it undeniably confirmed what Biden's critics had been saying about his cognitive health for years, and even sparked rumors that some Democrats were already talking that very night about how maybe he should consider dropping out of the race, Harris boiled the debate down to one bad night out of three and a half years during a heated back and forth exchange with CNN's Anderson Cooper.
"The Joe Biden that I worked with every day is someone who, as I have said, has performed in a way that has been about bringing people into the Oval Office, Republicans and Democrats, to compromise in a way that is extraordinary these days," she told Cooper at the time.
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Throughout all the calls in July from Democrats for Biden to withdraw from the race, including the infamous moment where former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to say she supported Biden staying in it, Harris never wavered publicly on her support of Biden while out on the campaign trail, often minimizing his debate performance as just one bad night that was best overlooked because Orange Man Bad.
On Thursday, she had a chance to pivot, to maybe be more upfront and honest about her defenses of Biden since the debate performance that was the catalyst for shaming him into withdrawing.
She didn't and she wasn't. Instead, the Democratic presidential nominee who watched the same debate performance we did, who had stood by Biden's side for three and a half years and was no doubt witness to a lot more troubling moments than we were when we saw him out in public, said she had no regrets whatsoever.
From the CNN transcript:
BASH: Vice President Harris, you were a very staunch defender of President Biden’s capacity to serve another four years 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: No, not at all. Not at all. I have served with President Biden for almost four years now. And I’ll tell ya it’s one of the greatest honors of my career, truly. He cares so deeply about the American people. He is so smart and — and loyal to the American people. And I have spent hours upon hours with him, be it in the Oval Office or the Situation Room. He has the intelligence, the commitment, and the judgment and disposition that I think the American people rightly deserve in their president.
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In my view, this was about as disqualifying of an answer as it gets. I mean the whole freakin' reason she's where she is now is because an overwhelming majority of Democrat leaders/movers and shakers on Capitol Hill (not to mention the mega-donors, Hollywood elitists, and the Obamas) were terrified over what Biden's debate performance revealed to America about his frailty, his lack of coherency, and his mental acuity.
Of course, Kamala Harris is not just going to come right out and say Joe Biden is unfit to serve another four years in office - especially considering she was the beneficiary of his announcement and endorsement. But to sit there and pretend like Biden has been a model of strength, leadership, and intestinal fortitude since Day One? Seriously - does anyone outside of Jill Biden even believe that anymore?
There are a lot of reasons why Kamala Harris does not deserve to be president, but perhaps the most important one is her unwillingness to level with the American people about Joe Biden's health. She could have done it in a way that showed respect to her boss but that still got the point across and didn't make her look like a complete shill and tool.
But she didn't. And my guess is that because in doing so she would have exposed her own complicity in the sham and troublesome cover-up.
Kamala Harris will always put personal ambition and politics ahead of country. If the American people didn't learn anything else about her from the CNN interview, let's hope they learned that much.
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