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The political press demonstrated daily that it has zero self-respect. It is fawning over the “momentum” and gravitas of Kamala Harris while the candidate has refused to do interviews or press conferences for weeks.
At the head of this servile line is Time magazine, which published a painterly portrait of Kamala with the words “Her Moment.” In between puffy clouds of prose, Time writer Charlotte Alter admitted “Harris has yet to do a single substantive interview or to explain her policy shifts. (Her campaign denied a request for an interview for this story.)”
It’s quite a contrast to Donald Trump, who Time interviewed for a cover story in April. That interview went long enough for Time.com to tell you the transcript was an “83 Minute Read.” On top of that they did a long “fact check” that was a “21 Minute Read.”
KAMALA HARRIS’ GLOWING TIME COVER DRAGGED BY CRITICS: ‘JOURNOS WORSHIPPING POLITICIANS, TERRIFIC’
Giving access to the press gets you precisely nothing.
There is no “fact check” for Kamala, since there was no interview. Instead, Alter offered repeated comparisons to pop-music superstars. She began: “The soundtrack suggested a Beyoncé concert. The light-up bracelets evoked the Eras Tour [of Taylor Swift]. And the exuberant crowd—more than 14,000 strong, lining up in the rain—resembled the early days of Barack Obama.”
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Taylor Swift came up again a few paragraphs later: “More than 38,000 people registered on Vote.org in the 48 hours after she became the presumptive nominee, eclipsing the voter-registration surge encouraged by Taylor Swift last year.”
But that wasn’t enough: “Mass enthusiasm for a woman is nothing new: Harris’s run comes just a year after the blockbuster summer of Barbie, Beyoncé, and Swift.”
Perhaps most implausibly, TIME dragged out “Star Wars” puffery. Sen. Cory Booker claimed Harris has “mastered the art of ‘arm twisting’ required to pass major legislation” for Democrats. “She has gone,” he said, “from being a Padawan to a Jedi master.”
Overall, Alter summarized, “Harris has pulled off the swiftest vibe shift in modern political history.” The media pretend that Harris creates “vibe shifts,” as if their incessant proclamations about her “momentum” and her “joyous warrior” poses aren’t part of the vibe-shifting attempt.
Even Kamala Harris the Horrible Boss is dismissed. We’re told she’s been let down by poor staff instead. “One challenge for Harris has been the people around her. Over the years, a rotating cast of senior staff has clouded her message and raised questions about her abilities as a manager.”
Harris is accountable for nothing, while former President Donald Trump sat for a hostile interview with a Time scribe named Eric Cortellessa. He asked Trump eleven questions about the Trump prosecutions (and “revenge” for them), five questions about January 6, two about potential political violence in 2025, four on fighting the “deep state,” three on his “dictator for a day” joke, and four on whether he’d seek to overturn the 22nd Amendment and seek a third term.
When it came to being prosecuted by Biden’s Justice Department, Cortellessa lectured Trump: “I just want to say for the record, there’s no evidence that President Biden directed this prosecution against you.” Trump rejected that: “I always hate the way a reporter will make those statements. They know it’s so wrong.”
Time, like other slavishly pro-Biden-Harris outlets, will never acknowledge that Biden’s number-three Justice Department official Matthew Colangelo’s resignation to join Alvin Bragg’s team of Trump prosecutors shreds the “no evidence” lie.
Time’s artistic Kamala cover recalls the kind of celebratory swagger they brought to a cover story on Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and on Christine Blasey Ford, one of the unsubstantiated sexual-assault accusers of Brett Kavanaugh. It’s the kind of giddy propaganda that makes conservatives gag at the idea that the media provides “the first draft of history.”
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