A hard-hitting Harris interview is still yet to come.
Since Ms. Harris began granting more interviews in recent days, her media strategy has been to sit with friendly inquisitors who are not inclined to ask terribly thorny questions or press her when her responses are evasive.
Nothing about that changed during her interview with Ms. Ruhle before her audience on MSNBC, the liberal cable channel whose viewers overwhelmingly favor Democratic candidates.
It’s not quite clear what Ms. Harris gained, aside from giving her campaign aides the ability to say she held a one-on-one cable television interview.
For the vice president, speaking with Ms. Ruhle was roughly in the same ballpark as Mr. Trump having one of his regular chats with Sean Hannity of Fox News.
Last week, Ms. Ruhle openly showed her preference for Ms. Harris over Mr. Trump during an appearance on Bill Maher’s HBO program. And when she interviewed Mr. Biden in May 2023, Ms. Ruhle did not press him after his stumbling answers and praised him throughout the 14-minute discussion.
So it went with Ms. Harris. Ms. Ruhle joined Ms. Harris in attacking Mr. Trump (“His plan is not serious, when you lay it out like that”) and avoided posing tricky questions about positions Ms. Harris supported during her 2020 presidential campaign or what, if anything, she knew about Mr. Biden’s physical condition or mental acuity as his own campaign deteriorated.
Which is perhaps why Ms. Harris agreed to the interview in the first place.
https://archive.is/JGqvC#selection-5093.0-5137.75