Kamala’s interview was a masterclass in dodging traps set by Trump

Donald Trump is desperate to depict his White House rival as tongue-tied, inarticulate and obsessed by identity politics, writes Jon Sopel. Her first major interview in this election campaign painted a very different picture

Kamala Harris high-fives a supporter at a rally in Savannah, Georgia on Thursday (AFP via Getty Images)

POLITICIAN SITS DOWN FOR INTERVIEW – SHOCK. As headlines go, you would hardly rush into your newsroom and scream at the editor to hold the front page, like some latter-day Woodward or Bernstein.

But such has been the extraordinary – and dare I say slightly synthetic – outrage over the failure of Kamala Harris to do a sitdown interview, that her encounter with CNN’s Dana Bash assumed far more significance than it should have done.

The faux-fury was stoked by the Trump campaign who were making all manner of scurrilous suggestions about why she refused to put down the security blanket of the teleprompter. Donald Trump would repeatedly tell his supporters that she was stupid. Dumb. Can’t string a sentence together. That the only way to hide her maniacal laugh was to stick to autocue.

The Trump campaign was aided and abetted by a US media feeling self-importantly aggrieved that her campaign was swerving around them. How dare she decide to shun the fourth estate during her campaign for the Democratic Party nomination. But given the success with which she has electrified this race and handed the Democrats a real sense of hope, who’s to say she was wrong? It is a slightly terrifying thought for us in the media that politicians might not need us as much as we need them.

Whether the American people felt the same level of pearl-clutching concern about the lack of an unscripted interview, I frankly doubt. It was a self-regarding media and a rival campaign – rightly – trying to make capital and score some points.

Donald Trump gets a lot spot on in trusting his gut when it comes to campaigning. But he gets a lot wrong. What he did over the Kamala Harris interview was to seek to depict her as a tongue-tied, inarticulate thicko. And guess what happens in the interview? She sits down, opens her mouth and words come tumbling out. The words form sentences, and the sentences become cogent answers. The expectation management from Trump and his sidekicks was woeful.

They set a bar so low that all she could really do was go soaring over it. She was a pole vaulter in the high jump. It’s not that her dialogue was Socratic. She’s not a Cicero. But she was fine. Just fine. And you could feel the disappointment and deflation in Mar-a-Lago, as Trump’s post-match judgement came in one word and block caps (natch): BORING, with three exclamation marks.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz sit down for first interview as Democratic ticket with CNN (CNN)

But what of the content? You will remember that Joe Biden’s first tilt at the Democratic presidential nomination came asunder in 1988 when he plagiarised a speech from the then-Labour leader Neil Kinnock. Kinnock’s “Why am I the first in a thousand generations of Kinnocks to go to university” became ”why am I, Joe Biden the first in his family to go to university”.

Well, Kamala Harris didn’t plagiarise anyone last night on CNN. But the playbook was pure Sir Keir Starmer. Just as Starmer ahead of this year’s general election did a reverse ferret on the policy platform on which he stood to be Labour leader, so Kamala Harris was pressing the reverse thrust button last night on some of the policies she advocated when she ran unsuccessfully against Biden for the Democratic nomination back in 2019. It was flip-flop a go-go.

She now no longer opposes fracking – a shrewd policy change given how crucial Pennsylvania is for the Democrats this November. And where once she said she wouldn’t criminalise illegal immigrants crossing the border, last night she said there were laws that needed to be enforced.

None of this is surprising. Whether you are campaigning for your party’s nomination in the US or to be leader of your party in the UK, you need first to attract your activists and then once you’ve done that, the country. You tack to where the votes are.

There are still vulnerabilities around some of the details of economic policy, but Harris came through the interview unscathed

Kamala Harris boards Air Force Two for her two-day trip to Georgia (POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

But one thing she didn’t do – and this will have caused even greater disappointment at Trump Central – was take the bait on Trump’s race-baiting. When asked to comment on his offensive remarks about her only recently deciding she was black, she paused and said: “Same old playbook. Next question.” That was it. She wasn’t going there.

Harris is determined to eschew identity politics. She is not running as a black woman. She is running as Kamala Harris. And that marks a shift from Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful campaign, when she made breaking the glass ceiling such an important part of her stump speeches.

Trump would love to depict Harris as some rabid culture warrior. He probably will regardless. But she is not going to supply the ammo.

All of which is leaving the Trump campaign floundering a bit. They still haven’t a settled line of attack, and the polls while showing nothing decisive (there is nothing to compare to the succession of polls before July’s election in Britain showing Labour well ahead), there is momentum for Harris – and some are showing her pulling away from Trump in the key battleground states. His campaign advisors keep telling him to lay off the playground insults, but he can’t seem to help himself.

The next critical moment will be the debate between them on 10 September. After that, it’s hard to see anything that could become a major momentum-shifter before 5 November.

At the moment, it’s Trump who needs to change the trajectory of his race, given the remarkable turnaround of Dem fortunes since Biden pulled out. And if all you can say is “BORING!!!” then you have cause for concern.