On the menu today: Kamala Harris and Tim Walz meet the press, and while last night didn’t go particularly well for either of them, the Democratic ticket probably emerged relatively unscathed. Meanwhile, Donald Trump pledges that when he’s president again, in vitro fertilization will be free, and completely misunderstands what a Florida abortion referendum would do. We wrap up the week with some thoughts on the new movie, Reagan.
A Vacuous Interview
Last night’s CNN interview with Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz was never likely to derail her campaign. Yes, by avoiding any interviews or formal press conferences for 38 days, Harris raised the stakes of this interview, and by any objective measure, her answers were not great. But they also weren’t bad enough to shake up the race. The vice president’s handlers have good reason to keep her away from questioning, because when push comes to shove, she doesn’t have good answers for why she hasn’t enacted any of her current proposals during her time in office, or why she’s changed her old positions. Nor does Tim Walz have any good answers for why he keeps saying things about himself that aren’t true.
This is a campaign built on vibes, and it will remain a campaign built on vibes. It is up to the Trump campaign to convince the public that this election should be about something more.
Let’s look at the transcript. (Remember, yesterday afternoon, certain people on social media were telling you that CNN would not release a transcript, at the request of the campaign. This was always implausible. Remember who lies to you in pursuit of clicks and followers and clout.)
CNN anchor Dana Bash’s first question was as straightforward as it gets: If you are elected, what would you do on Day One in the White House?
Harris gave an answer that was about as clear, sharp, and detailed as Monet’s Impression at Sunrise:
I will tell you first and foremost one of my highest priorities is to do what we can to support and strengthen the middle class. When I look at the aspirations, the goals, the ambitions of the American people, I think that people are ready for a new way forward in a way that generations of Americans have been fueled by — by hope and by optimism. I think sadly in the last decade, we have had in the former president someone who has really been pushing an agenda and an environment that is about diminishing the character and the strength of who we are as Americans — really dividing our nation. And I think people are ready to turn the page on that.
Right out of the gate, she was giving the same old loop-de-loop generalities that sound like a cross between a haiku and a Hallmark card.
Bash repeated the question, and effectively gave Harris a do-over.
BASH: So what would you do Day One?
HARRIS: Day One, it’s gonna be about one, implementing my plan for what I call an opportunity economy. I’ve already laid out a number of proposals in that regard, which include what we’re gonna do to bring down the cost of everyday goods, what we’re gonna do to invest in America’s small businesses, what we’re gonna do to invest in families.
Walz offered an answer that amounted to, “Me, too”:
WALZ: Well, I’m excited about this agenda, too. As I said, the idea of inspiring America to what can be. And I think many of these things that the vice president’s proposing are — are — are things that we share in values. And the child tax credit’s one we know that reduces childhood poverty by a third. We did it in Minnesota. To have a federal partner in this —unbelievable, I think, in the impact that we can make.
Give Bash a C+ — Harris and Walz offered plenty of opportunities for follow-ups or pressing for more specifics, and Bash rarely took those opportunities. Although credit Bash for this interjection:
HARRIS: I am so proud to be running with Tim Walz for president of the United States and to bring America what I believe the American people deserve, which is a new way forward, and turn the page on the last decade of what I believe has been contrary to where the spirit of our country really lies.
BASH: With the last decade, of course, the last three and a half years has been part of your administration.
And some questions were not softballs, like this early one: “I wonder what you say to voters who do want to go back when it comes to the economy specifically because their groceries were less expensive, housing was more affordable when Donald Trump was president.”
Harris responded by lying:
Well, let’s start with the fact that when Joe Biden and I came in office during the height of a pandemic, we saw over 10 million jobs were lost. People — I mean, literally we are all tracking the numbers — hundreds of people a day were dying because of COVID. The economy had crashed.
This is a ludicrous rewriting of history; by January 2021, the unemployment that spiked because of Covid had declined from 23 million to 10.2 million.
BASH: So you have been vice president for three and a half years. The steps that you’re talking about now, why haven’t you done them already?
HARRIS: Well, first of all, we had to recover as an economy, and we have done that.
When Bash asked, “So you maintain Bidenomics is a success?” Harris gave a long defense of the Biden — excuse me, the Biden–Harris record — which amounted to a yes: “I’ll say that that’s good work. There’s more to do, but that’s good work,” she summarized.
Harris’s worst answer probably came on fracking, when she asserted that when she joined the Biden ticket in 2020, she abandoned her desire to ban fracking, and it never came back. I guess it’s like chicken pox — once you’ve had the desire to ban fracking and it passes, your body retains the antibodies to fight it off in the future:
BASH: I want to get some clarity on where you stand on some key policy issues. Energy is a big one. In — when you were in Congress, you supported the Green New Deal. And in 2019 you said, quote, “There is no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.” Fracking, as you know, is a pretty big issue, particularly in your must-win state of Pennsylvania.
HARRIS: Sure.
BASH: Do you still want to ban fracking?
HARRIS: No, and I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020, that I would not ban fracking. As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking.
BASH: In 2019, I believe in a town hall, you said — you were asked, “Would you commit to implementing a federal ban on fracking on your first day in office?” and you said, “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking. So yes.” So it changed in — in that campaign?
HARRIS: In 2020 I made very clear where I stand. We are in 2024, and I have not changed that position, nor will I going forward. I kept my word, and I will keep my word.
Only Kamala Harris could say, “I kept my word,” while trying to explain away a flip-flop.
Harris also insisted that her work as “migration czar” had been a success:
BASH: During the Biden–Harris administration, there were record numbers of illegal border crossings. Why did the Biden–Harris administration wait three and a half years to implement sweeping asylum restrictions?
HARRIS:Well, first of all, the root-causes work that I did as vice president, that I was asked to do by the president has actually resulted in a number of benefits, including historic investments by American businesses in that region. The number of immigrants coming from that region has actually reduced since we’ve began that work.
On the issue of Israel, Hamas, and Gaza, Harris repeated, “We’ve gotta get a deal done,” with the robotic insistence and monotony of Bill Belichick insisting, “We’re on to Cincinnati.” Harris, and seemingly every other Democrat, refuses to even entertain the possibility that those guys in Hamas holding hostages might not be such reasonable good-faith negotiators.
There may not be a good way for a person in Harris’s situation to address President Joe Biden and his health and age. If there is a good way, Harris isn’t going to be the one to find it:
BASH: Vice President Harris, you were a very staunch defender of President Biden’s capacity to serve another four years right after the debate. You insisted that President Biden is extraordinarily strong. Given where we are now, do you have any regrets about what you told the American people?
HARRIS: No, not at all. Not at all.
This is not an acceptable answer; Democrats want us to believe that Biden was hale, hearty, sharp, and energetic, and then he spontaneously combusted on June 27. (Also, for what it’s worth, Harris’s initial reaction to the Biden debate was to damn him with faint praise, saying he “did not get off to a strong start in that debate, but he had a strong finish” and “the bottom line is this: Let us not decide the outcome of who’s gonna be president of the United States based on a 90-minute debate.”)
Walz sat silently for long stretches and really didn’t need to be there. You can’t begrudge Bash for directing most of her questions to Harris, since she’s the nominee. But his answers to questions he had to know were coming were not reassuring:
BASH: And the — the idea that you said that you were in war, did you misspeak, as the campaign has said?
WALZ: Yeah, I said — we were talking about in this case, this was after a school shooting, the ideas of carrying these weapons of war. And my wife the English teacher told me my grammar’s not always correct.
Horsepucky. “Those weapons of war that I carried in war” is not a matter of grammar.
BASH: When you ran for Congress in 2006, your campaign repeatedly made false statements about a 1995 arrest for drunk and reckless driving. What do you say to voters who aren’t sure whether they can take you at your word?
WALZ: Well, I’ve been very public. I think they can see — my students come out, former folks I’ve served with, and they, and they do, they vouch for me. I certainly own my mistakes when I make ’em.
Walz repeated his lie regarding in vitro fertilization: “I spoke about the treatments that were available to us that — that had those beautiful children there. That’s quite a contrast in folks that are trying to — to take those rights away from us.” Walz said this on a day when Donald Trump pledged that as president, he would make IVF treatments free. (This is a wildly expensive and pandering policy; see below.)
Trump Promises Free IVF for Everyone
In vitro fertilization is a wonderful gift to couples who want to have a child but are having difficulty conceiving. But not everything that is good in this world should be provided to people for free, at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer. (The national debt is $35 trillion, and we’re on pace for a $1.5 trillion deficit this fiscal year.)
But now the presidential race is a pander-a-thon, and Donald Trump has announced that if elected, he would have either the government or insurers (which is to say taxpayers, workers, and Americans generally) pay for IVF. This would cost an estimated $8 billion per year.
As Ramesh summarizes, “None of this is politically necessary. It’s not going to diminish the fury of liberals over his role in reversing Roe v. Wade. It’s not going to help him overcome the chief obstacle to his election: the deep character flaws that have made him persistently unpopular. It’s just going to help entrench the evil of abortion in American life.”
Once Again, Trump Can’t Be Bothered to Know What He’s Talking About
Florida Amendment 4, the ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution, represents one of the most extreme proposals on the issue in recent memory. It holds that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”
Got that? No restrictions on abortion until viability, which is generally around six months.
Former president Trump, answering a question about Amendment 4, yesterday:
REPORTER: In Florida, the state that you are a resident of, there’s an abortion-related amendment on the ballot to overturn the six-week ban in Florida. How are you going to vote on that?
TRUMP: I think the six-week is too short. It has to be more time. And so, I’ve told them I want more weeks.
REPORTER: So, you’re voting in favor of the amendment?
TRUMP: I’m voting that — I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks. Look, just so you understand, everybody wanted Roe v. Wade terminated, for years. Fifty-two years. I got it done. They wanted it to go back to the states. Exceptions are really important for me, for Ronald Reagan, for others that have navigated this very interesting and difficult path.
Trump has no idea what Amendment 4 is, and instead of saying something like, “I need to look closely at the language of the referendum before I answer that,” he gives an answer that sounds an awful lot like an endorsement — “I think the six-week is too short. It has to be more time.”
ADDENDUM: When I first saw the trailer for Reagan, I feared we would get something akin to The Iron Lady — a great performance in a movie that tries to tell the story of a life that is too long and complicated to do justice to it in two hours or so, glossing over events that probably warrant their own movie.
Reagan is ultimately deeply satisfying for those of us who have fond memories of the 40th president, and packs a lot into its two hours and 15 minutes. The movie gains some focus from its framing device — Jon Voight is a geriatric KGB spymaster, explaining to a young and ambitious Russian leader why the Soviet Union really collapsed. (I started wondering if this was meant to be a secular The Screwtape Letters. I also wondered if the film was attempting to draw a parallel between the Soviet threat of the last century and the coalition of hostile powers facing us today.) It is the best depiction of Reagan in pop culture since the video game Call of Duty.
First, Dennis Quaid gives the performance of a lifetime, capturing the Reagan mystique as much as anyone can. (There’s no getting around it, though: There are parts that are so cheesy, those who are lactose intolerant should take their pills before viewing.)
It’s indisputably made by Reagan fans, but it at least stops to acknowledge Iran-Contra, the defeat to Ford, and the setbacks and disappointments and stresses in his marriage with Nancy. The montage of Reagan’s hammy advertising-pitchman gigs made me feel a little less self-conscious about all the ad reads on the Three Martini Lunch podcast.
The section about Soviet leadership quickly changing from Leonid Brezhnev to Yuri Andropov to Konstantin Chernenko to Mikhail Gorbachev had me cackling. I knew the Reagan line that would be the punchline to the scene, but Quaid nails the infuriated exasperation perfectly.
Dan Lauria, the dad from The Wonder Years, plays former House speaker Tip O’Neill, and the movie features a scene that demonstrates that we once had better, more caring, more compassionate and decent leaders. Here’s the real-life account:
Following the assassination attempt, former Reagan aide Max Friedersdorf shared that O’Neill was one of the first people the president let visit him at George Washington University Hospital. Friedersdorf observed that when O’Neill entered Reagan’s hospital room, “He nodded my way and walked over to the bed and grasped both the president’s hands, and said, ‘God bless you, Mr. President.’ The president still seemed groggy . . . with lots of tubes and needles running in and out of his body. But when he saw Tip, he lit up and gave the speaker a big smile, and said, ‘Thanks for coming, Tip.’ Then, still holding one of the president’s hands, the speaker got down on his knees and said he would like to offer a prayer for the president, choosing the 23rd Psalm.” Then O’Neill kissed Reagan on the forehead.
The very best scene is the post-credits one, where Reagan arrives into his post-presidential office at Nakatomi Plaza and finds Nick Fury, who tells him that he’s just become part of a bigger universe.