Originally Authored at TheFederalist.com
It’s supposed to be a great honor bestowed upon CNN and even the American voters that Kamala Harris, along with her crutch Tim Walz, will finally appear Thursday for an interview — a taped interview (meaning edited), not a live one.
Goodie.
Outside of any debates between Kamala and Donald Trump (assuming at least one takes place), this is how the next 68 days are going to be, all at the insistence of the national media and to the great pleasure of Kamala. This is a first-of-its-kind presidential campaign where you’re not supposed to see either candidate, aside from the occasional still photo and edited video, accompanied by stories relayed by the media — the vast majority of which will be deceptive, if not outright and blatantly false.
To the extent that it’s in their control — and they do still have a lot of control — the media don’t want voters directly exposed to Trump or Kamala. Trump, because the more voters see him, the more they like him. Kamala, for the exact opposite reason.
Recall the 2016 election roughly 300 years ago. Trump won, and after it was over, the media spent all of 24 hours admitting they had become too insular and were too far removed from the concerns and motivations of Americans who don’t live in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and New York. Then they immediately changed course and got to the far easier and more preferable work of sabotaging Trump’s presidency and ensuring they never again made the mistake of treating him like a legitimate elected figure chosen by voters to lead the nation.
That meant dismissing every reason voters had picked a game show host over a former senator and secretary of state to be president and increasingly denying him live TV coverage, which they excused by saying, “Well, all he does is lie, so we’re not gonna show that.”
Suppression of Trump’s speech and image became the norm. By the end of his presidency, he was kicked off Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Remember when CNN last year hosted Trump (a former president who was running for president again) in a live televised town hall setting? When it proved beneficial for the candidate, the rest of the media lamented the event’s host as “set up to fail.” Then CNN’s parent company fired the channel’s top executive.
After the town hall event, Trump essentially disappeared from live TV (outside of Fox News appearances). That is, until the debate in June, ironically, also hosted by CNN. That one ended up benefiting Trump too. So much so that Democrats were willing to risk the power of incumbency by pulling the plug on Joe Biden’s campaign and hurling Kamala to the top of the party as the new nominee.
We’re not seeing much of her on TV either. But while Trump wants to be on TV and is denied access, Kamala is intentionally avoiding it and the media are helping.
Yeah, there have been a few stories and cable news segments pondering when and where Kamala would finally do a national TV interview as the Democrat’s new and unelected nominee. But they’re swiftly followed by vicious commentaries attacking Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance as a woman-hater — or otherwise stories that generously portray Kamala as a sensible moderate with legitimate policy proposals (as if she’s not literally in the White House right now to implement them).
If our reprehensible media had a genuine interest in pressuring Kamala into interviews or press conferences, there would be a spate of articles and TV segments about the objective failures of the current administration, in which she serves as vice president. Hyperinflation, millions of illegal migrants flooding the country, and two new foreign wars all happened on her watch. There would be round-the-clock coverage of the fact that her anonymous campaign aides have offered no explanation for why Kamala has allegedly abandoned every major policy position she had for her entire national political career up until two months ago. If she did, what happened that led to her change of heart?
It’s no wonder Kamala stays hidden from the media. They give her no incentive to do otherwise by simply repeating whatever notes her campaign passes along. Meanwhile, Trump is on standby for just a chance at engaging with a national TV audience that isn’t solely watching Fox News. They won’t give it to him because they need him just as hidden as Kamala.