With her 100% glowing coverage from the mainstream media for two weeks, Kamala Harris decided to continue running the clock out on a fast-moving political game.
She refused to appear with former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania on September 4 with Fox News hosts Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. Incredibly, the Harris campaign blamed Trump for abandoning an appearance on ABC News with George Stephanopoulos, which had been scheduled for September with a different candidate, President Biden.
"Donald Trump is running scared, trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to, and running straight to Fox News to bail him out," Harris campaign spokesman Michael Tyler said in a statement on Saturday. "He needs to stop playing games and show up to the debate he already committed to on September 10. Mr. Anytime, Anywhere, Anyplace should have no problem with that unless he's too scared to show up on the 10th."
It was the ultimate example of hubris, to which Harris is long accustomed. Here was a politician who struggles with thoughts and words even in front of friendly audiences, ridiculing Trump as someone scared to debate her. Not that Harris has such a stellar debate record herself. She hasn't appeared on a debate stage in over four years. She performed so poorly in her debates during the 2020 Democratic primaries that she withdrew from the campaign before the first state even voted. And Trump is scared of her?
If anything, Harris should be profoundly grateful to Trump for his debate skills. Were it not for his outstanding debate performance in Atlanta when he vanquished the legitimate Democratic Party nominee, President Biden, Harris would not be enjoying the media's new-found love and admiration as the presidential nominee.
Trump showed up in Atlanta as the absolute underdog. He agreed to all the terms established by the Biden campaign.
He accepted Biden's condition that no people would be in the room. It was a massive victory for Biden, who loses his train of thought because applause and boos distracted him. (Biden got distracted anyway).
The turf was CNN, the most anti-Trump network with the exception of leftist opinion factory MSNBC. It was an extraordinary gamble for Trump, considering that CNN has consistently criticized him through nearly all of its hosts on a 24/7 basis for over eight years.
CNN carries some legitimacy as the network most people turn to for news, so Trump's appearance on the channel was particularly risky. Launched in 1980, CNN employs around 4,000 journalists and staff globally. It broadcasts to over 200 countries and territories, with viewership averaging around 100 million households worldwide. Its website attracts over 100 million unique monthly visitors, and CNN boasts millions of followers across major social media platforms. In our June I&I/TIPP Poll, 70% of Democrats had a favorable opinion of CNN, and just 12% were unfavorable. For independents, it was 35% favorable, 40% unfavorable. And for GOP voters, it was 27% favorable, 56% unfavorable.
Worse, the two CNN moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, are avid Never Trumpers. Tapper has made little effort to hide an outright disdain bordering on hatred for Trump. When he was defeated in 2020, Tapper declared, "For tens of millions of our fellow Americans, their long national nightmare is over. It's been a time of extreme divisions, many of the divisions caused and exacerbated by President Trump himself," Tapper asserted.
After the first debate in 2020, Tapper said on the air, "It wasn't even a debate. It was a disgrace, primarily because of President Trump lying, maliciously attacking the son of the vice president." You took the words right out of my mouth," agreed Dana Bash. "You used some high-minded language. I'm just going to say it like it is: That was a shitshow."
Biden hunkered down in Camp David for seven long days to practice for the debate. Meanwhile, Trump was active on the campaign trail and fending off the various lawsuits engineered by Biden and his cohorts.
Yet, Trump handily beat Biden at the debate. For the first time in American history, a major party candidate abandoned his White House bid after overwhelmingly winning his Party's primaries. This happened because Party leaders were scared that Trump would destroy Biden in their ABC debate on September 10, finishing off their campaign. For the Harris campaign to state that Trump fears debating her is bizarre. The media doesn't see it that way, but bread-and-butter voters do.
Trump's reasoning for withdrawing from the ABC News debate on September 10 was sound. He maintained that the deal to appear on ABC was with Biden, not Kamala Harris, a last-minute bait-and-switch candidate.
Even more importantly, Trump has a legal matter pending before ABC News. Trump had sued the network and the anchor, Stephanopoulos, for defamation and for publicly stating that Trump had been found liable for raping the writer E. Jean Carroll. Defamation cases against the media are rarely won. Still, a federal judge in Florida allowed the case to continue: "A jury may, upon viewing the segment, find there was sufficient context...but a reasonable jury could conclude Plaintiff was defamed and, as a result, dismissal is inappropriate." No sane lawyer would permit a face-to-face altercation between the plaintiff and the defendant when a legal case is pending, or worse, on international television. The Harris campaign ignored this fact. So, predictably, did the media.
Lastly, after Trump appeared on a highly unfavorable network such as CNN, it was only fair for him to expect Kamala Harris to appear on Fox News, which is not altogether pro-Trump. Recall that Fox News first called Arizona for Biden in 2020, inviting Trump's ire. We can conclude only one thing: Harris is terrified of debating Trump. We would be, too, if we had a record of failures like Harris does.
