Now that Donald Trump is president and the 2024 election is in the rearview mirror, mainstream journalists are finally acknowledging what was once off-limits: Kamala Harris was a weak candidate, and her campaign was a failure. A newly published excerpt from Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House by journalists Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen provides an assessment of Harris’s candidacy that starkly contrasts with the media coverage she received at the time.
“Vice President Kamala Harris wasn’t performing well in softball interviews as her sugar high faded in September and early October,” Parnes and Allen write. They recount how Harris had “bombed” her interview with Fox News host Bret Baier while her team was negotiating a possible appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast—an event that never materialized. The authors describe how the campaign had been “hermetically sealed in the manufacturer’s box, like she would retain more value without exposure to air and sunlight.”
This assessment is accurate but wildly different from how the media portrayed Harris in real time. The notion that she “bombed” her Fox News interview, for instance, was not the narrative many journalists pushed.
“She more than held her own,” wrote Chris Suellentrop, politics editor for The Washington Post. “Baier was the one who seemed flustered. … It was fun to watch: We learned, I guess, that she is tough under fire and that she got genuinely angry about Trump.”
Eugene Robinson of the Post called the interview a victory: “Practically since the day Harris became the Democratic nominee, Fox News hosts and guests have blasted her for not doing more unscripted interviews. Wednesday’s half-hour encounter was a reminder that we should all be careful what we wish for. She stood her ground, refuting the Trump campaign’s claim that she is weak and easily pushed around.”
USA Today columnist Rex Huppke was similarly approving: “Trump fans and his many minions at Fox News will undoubtedly say Harris failed miserably, but the truth, for people operating outside the bubble of insanity, is she more than held her own in a wildly adversarial situation.”
CNN’s Brian Stelter praised her “toughness and strength,” while former Rep. Max Rose (D-N.Y.) called the interview a “home run” that demonstrated her “courage.” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough found Baier “shockingly rude,” and The New York Times suggested his questioning could actually make Harris more appealing to female viewers.
Much of this coverage closely resembled Harris campaign spokesperson Brian Fallon’s assessment that she had shown “toughness in standing against a hostile interviewer.” While some outlets noted that she had “differentiated herself from President Joe Biden more clearly than she has in the past,” this was hardly a game-changing moment. Instead of saying there was “not a thing that comes to mind” in terms of what she’d do differently as president, Harris instead stated that her presidency “will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency” because she represented “a new generation of leadership.”
By fall 2024, most objective observers could see that Harris “wasn’t performing well in softball interviews.” But that wasn’t the story being told by mainstream journalists. They highlighted Harris’s comfortable exchanges with Oprah Winfrey, Stephen Colbert, The View, Alex Cooper of Call Her Daddy, and Ms. Jessica of Afternoon Vibes with Ms. Jessica, portraying them as part of her “unorthodox” outreach strategy.
Brian Stelter echoed the campaign’s line that this “reflects how the media world works in 2024.” Politico insisted Harris’s aversion to serious interviews was a reflection of the “shifting media landscape.” Meanwhile, Newsweek quoted political science professors praising her media strategy as “very savvy,” and Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin lauded Harris for recognizing the “limited reach of mainstream news outlets” and engaging in “revealing and meaty” discussions elsewhere. Rubin insisted Harris was “doing exactly the right thing” to spread her “substantive message out to the widest possible audience.” The New York Times similarly commended Harris’s “vivid” storytelling, portraying her as “engaged with life” and the kind of candidate who would “have a beer with you.”
With Trump in office, the pressure to maintain these narratives has evaporated. Journalists no longer have to avoid admitting that Harris struggled as a candidate. Stories that cast Democrats in an unflattering light won’t immediately be condemned as “helping Trump.” This post-election honesty has extended to coverage of Joe Biden as well, with recent reporting shedding light on the White House’s efforts to obscure his physical and cognitive decline—facts that, just months ago, would have been dismissed as right-wing propaganda.
Mainstream journalists have spent years eroding their own credibility. Belatedly acknowledging the obvious—that Harris was a poor candidate—won’t undo that damage, but at least it’s a step toward reality.
