Dark cloud 'looming' over 45
BONUS: Why doesn't Kamala interview well?
In my decades of observing national politics and actually covering state and local races in Connecticut, I’ve seen office-seekers commit blunders and indiscretions too numerous to mention. Some have cost them elections. The worst mistakes have even their derailed careers.
Of all the politicians who have blundered mightily, Donald Trump stands out as the gravity-defier. He routinely commits errors that would end the candidacy or career of any politician. The first I can recall was his insistence that Sen. John McCain, who spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese jail as a POW, wasn’t a real war hero “because he was captured.” And of course, there were the Access Hollywood tapes …
The former president is pushing the envelope once again with the news that he’s been hanging with a depraved social-media influencer named Laura Loomer. Let’s see … what’s the best way to describer her?
Loomer, 31, is a white nationalist, vehemently anti-Muslim attention seeker who has amplified claims that the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job.” Ironically, Trump took her to recent events memorializing the 9/11 attacks in Manhattan and Pennsylvania.
You can take a look at her loathsome feed on the platform formerly known as Twitter. Her name has even turned into its own verb. Getting attacked by her is called “Getting Loomered,” which sounds like the poorly conceived title of a cheesed-out porn film.
Here’s a sampling of her latest, greatest hits:
If Kamala Harris wins, her White House “will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center.” [the latter a presumed reference to the prevalence of calls centers staffed by workers in India].
In July, Loomer called Harris a “drug using prostitute.”
In a move that confirms her growing influence over the former president, the day before his debate with Harris in which Trump referenced Haitian migrants killing and eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio, Loomer had amplified them repeatedly on X.
While Trump insists she has no formal role in his campaign, staffers are quietly leaking to the press their concern about Loopy Loomer’s influence. Even Trump fan-girl Marjorie Taylor Greene (hardly a statesman herself) has called Loomer’s rhetoric a “‘huge problem” that “doesn’t represent MAGA.” Indeed, there is said to be a MAGA revolt going on. Green specifically called out Loomer’s “curry” comment as “appalling and extremely racist.”
I’m convinced that Trump understands the implications of hanging with Loomer, whom he has described merely as a “free spirit” and “supporter.” The entanglement with her means fewer people are talking about his poor debate performance — which probably embarrasses him more than anything else — or his racist insistence that Black people are feasting on Ohio’s cats and dogs.
Or an alternate theory from Charlie Sykes:
Was Nick Fuentes unavailable? Were Alex Jones, David Duke, and the Tiki-torch dudes otherwise engaged? Or does she have other charms for the former president? I couldn’t possibly say.
But it seems clear that she is providing Trump the sort of safe space he so desperately craves — a space where his darkest and ugliest instincts are stroked and validated.
Why doesn’t Kamala interview well?
In case you missed it, Vice President Kamala Harris sat down for a brief interview with a news anchor for the ABC affiliate in Philadelphia. The full video is above.
I don’t think she did very well. It seems that whenever Harris is asked about the economy, at least half the time she responds with “I grew up in a middle-class family.” I get why she answers that way. It draws a stark contrast with Trump, who lives in luxury and inherited millions from his racist, slumlord father Fred, who ironically was once the landlord of celebrated folksinger Woody Guthrie.
When asked by Brian Taff about how she would improve the lives of Americans by “bringing down prices and making things more affordable for people,” she spoke vaguely of the “opportunity economy” and her proposals for increased child tax credits and providing up to $20,000 for down payments for qualified home buyers. Ironically, the latter will actually raise housing costs by increasing demand without growing the supply. Unfortunately, it’s been my experience that many people who have worked in the government all their lives do not fully understand markets.
The problem with making Harris available for interviews so rarely is that when she finally sits for one, the stakes are too high and she tends to be rusty and nervous. Then because she is bad at giving interviews, her staff limits them, making it appear as if she’s afraid of the press, or just not that bright.
I reject the latter. You have to have your wits about you to score a TKO against Donald Trump in a debate, as Harris did last week. No, I think her awkwardness during interviews can be attributed to her career path.
Before she ran for the Senate in California starting in 2016, Harris was a prosecutor. She was district attorney in San Francisco for seven years and California’s attorney general for six years.
I’ve covered court cases and if there’s one thing I can tell you about prosecuting attorneys is they are rarely answer questions. But they ask them constantly. They question police officers and investigators before filing charges against defendants. They screen potential jurors during the voir dire process. They examine and cross-examine witnesses. Sometimes they even question defendants if s/he agrees to testify in their own defense.
Successful prosecutors are not only skilled at questioning others, but they must be capable of delivering a summation of the case against the defendant in such a way as to convince the jury of the guilt of the accused. She used all of those skills (and more) last Tuesday to put Trump back on his heels. But taking questions from the press clearly makes Harris uncomfortable.
I can relate. As a journalist, I’ve interviewed perhaps thousands of people over the years. On a couple of occasions, I’ve been interviewed by other journalists and I must confess that it seemed awkward, even though my 12 years as a high school English teacher equipped me to field dozens of inquiries from pesky teenagers every day.
EXTRA:
Finally, watch this video of J.D. Vance on CNN’s State of the Union this morning and tell me if you think he admitted to fabricating or “creating” the story of Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs in Ohio:
Loopy Loomer. Ha!! I never heard of her, so I followed your link to X. I see she has a little over one million followers, which just goes to show we are surrounded by idiots. If even MTG, she of the "Jewish space lasers" fame, thinks Loomer is racist she must really be something else. Let's hope she's having her 15 minutes of fame and move on.
I agree about Kamala's non-existent interviewing skills, or should I say, being the focus of an interview. The woman can't answer a question if her life depended on it. I get your point, posted after the last article, about being coached to answer the question you want to answer not the one that was asked, but every once in a while she's got to directly answer. The more time that goes by with her NOT answering about her policies and "life values", the more painfully obvious it is that this candidate never could have survived an open primary--as was evident in 2019/2020. Instead, what the Democrats have is a textbook example of the Peter Principle, in the flesh.
Kamala needs her debate coach to practice interviewing, now.