On September 25, Vice-President Kamala Harris appeared with Stephanie Ruhle for a sit-down interview on the MSNBC. Ruhle had fawned over Harris on a recent Bill Maher show, saying that Harris’ reluctance to answer any questions with substance is okay because we know her opponent (Donald Trump) and that knowledge alone is sufficient for deciding who to vote for, which of course is Harris. That Ruhle isn’t interested in substance excited the Harris campaign, so they sought out Ruhle for a “positive conversation.” During the sit-down Harris repeated her tactic of not answering questions (calling it a “tactic” puts the matter generously). This was fine by Ruhle, she later told colleague Nicolle Wallace, repeating that non-answers are “okay,” because these aren’t “clear and direct issues,” which I presume is code for “Orange Man.”
“What I didn’t hear from her was divisive language,” Ruhle told Wallace, before hallucinating a conversation with Trump. “Imagine if I was sitting against Donald Trump, imagine the language he would be using, please!” Would Ruhle repeat the same lies Harris repeated during the ABC News debate, which moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis never fact checked, while doing her best to follow in Muir and Davis’ footsteps of relentlessly fact checking of the President? If so, then I, too, can imagine the language Trump would be using.
I confess: I do not find Ruhle to be an impressive person. Ruhle’s appearance on Maher and her comments to Wallace indicates that she is hardly less vapid than Harris. Consider the following remark: “And just the fact that we were talking about collaborative inclusivity—I don’t know. Vote for her or don’t vote for her, but isn’t it great to just have a positive conversation right now?” Note that, in an interview with Trump, Ruhle would be sitting against the President, this is in contrast to Harris where Ruhle was sitting with the Vice-President. And what the hell is “collaborative inclusivity”?
For her part, Harris repeated the same words and phrases she uses every time she speaks. She praised “the spirit and character of the American people.” We have “ambition,” “aspirations,” “dreams,” and an “incredible work ethic.” Her vision for the economy? “I call it an ‘opportunity economy,’” she answered (it was her question, by the way). “I come from the middle class” she told us once more.
Ruhle praised Harris for her plan to give first-time home buyers $25,000 for a downpayment before noting that there is a housing shortage in the United States. No mention of whether that problem is a result of the Biden-Harris administration engineering the mass influx of millions of foreigners to small cities and towns across the United States. Harris answered that “some of the work is going to be through what we do in terms of giving benefits and assistance to state and local governments around transit dollars, and looking holistically at the connection between that and housing, and looking holistically at the incentives we in the federal government can create for local and state governments to actually engage in planning in a holistic manner that includes prioritizing affordable housing for working people.” I counted three instances of some variant of the word “holistic” in that sentence, but given its vacuity, it feels like more.
Of Trump Harris said, “He’s just not very serious about how he thinks about some of these issues. And one must be serious and have a plan, and a real plan, that’s not just about some talking point ending in an exclamation at a political rally, but actually putting the thought into, what will be the return on the investment, what will be the economic impact on everyday people?” She perfectly described her campaign and projects it onto Trump. So what’s new?
The interview was so bad that Morning Joe got the call to gaslight his audience over her performance. “I challenge anybody to find an interview from over nine years of Donald Trump where he actually talks about facts as specific as those facts,” he tweeted You don’t have to go back nine years to find such an interview. I will just pull an unscripted sit-down he did only a few weeks ago. He seems a bit tired here. Perhaps it’s the environment Lex Fridman sets. At any rate, enjoy.
freedom and reason 
Great title.