Kamala gets warm reception in softball interviews — and hardball reaction from MAGA – Times of India

Kamala Harris (Picture credit: AP)

TOI correspondent from Washington: She cracked a beer with the host in one interview, revealed on another radio show that she’s a fan of Formula One racing, and in a third, spoke feelingly about taking care of her mother when she was stricken with cancer. A Kamala Harris‘ media blitz on Tuesday sought to generate vibes and humanize her for an electorate large sections of whom say they are not very familiar with her, but it left her MAGA critics unimpressed.
Trump minions who complained that she does not do one-on-one interviews are now complaining that she is doing too many, after Harris appeared on 60 Minutes, ABC’s The View, Howard Stern Show, the podcast Call Her Daddy, and Late Show with Stephen Colbert over the past 72 hours. “Whose brilliant idea was it to send her out on a comedy tour as a Category 5 hurricane barrels toward the Gulf coast?” asked Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s former press secretary, who called it “political malpractice” even though her MAGA supremo remains an unrelenting media hog despite his disdain for what he characterizes as “fake news.”
Trump himself, ever mindful of media metrics, waded into the issue, denigrating the five women hosts who constitute a panel on ABC’s The View, calling them “degenerates” and “dumb” who were soft on “Lyin’ Kamala” who is being “exposed as a ‘dummy’ every time she does a show.”
Indeed, Harris got a warm reception and mostly softball questions on all the shows, quite different in tone and tenor though to the simpering, sycophantic encounters Trump has with his MAGA hosts on Fox and allied platforms. Stephen Colbert welcomed her with a beer, with a political aphorism that “People vote for the person they’d have a beer with,” but that in turn triggered the MAGA mob, which found it hard to digest that she was having a beer on a late night show when a Cat 5 hurricane was roaring towards Florida. “She did this to appeal to white men in the midwest,” wailed one MAGA troll.
On the Howard Stern show she revealed that she is a fan of Formula one racing, and her favorite driver is “Lewis Hamilton, of course,” – another perceived outreach for the white male vote. But the most glowing reviews for Harris came on ABC’s The View, which has an all-women panel, including a former Trump aide, and a Republican never-Trumper. “I’m basking in the light…I hope we can put this woman in that black job,” joked host Whoopi Goldberg, referring to Trump’s reference to immigrants taking “black jobs.”