WASHINGTON – Vice President Kamala Harris complained about poor media coverage this week – during a friendly interview with a Washington Post columnist – whining that the press was not specializing in what she called “the strength of my leadership.”
“There are things I’ve done as vp that fully exhibit the ability of my leadership as vp that did not get the sort of coverage that I feel Dobbs got,” Harris told Jonathan Capehart, referring to the June 24 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade and bringing abortion back to the states.
“What you have been in a position to see,” added veep, “is predicated on what will probably be covered.”
In his opinion, a fractionCapehart argued that contrary to traditional opinion, Harris, 58, “had an incredible 12 months” and cited three alleged “tent poles” from her 2022.
Capehart said one in every of them was Harris’ appearance on the Munich Security Conference in February, just before Russia invaded Ukraine. He didn’t mention, nonetheless, that Harris was ridiculed for telling reporters at that conference that Europe had enjoyed “peace and security” for the reason that end of World War II.
This remark, as noted by many critics, ignored the 40-year Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, the brutal breakup of Yugoslavia within the Nineties, the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, and the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Capehart said the subsequent tent pole was Harris’ response to the May leak of a draft ruling in Dobbs by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. At that time, Harris said, she told her employees, “I’m leaving DC,” and spoke across the country for reproductive rights.
Nevertheless, after the choice was actually made, the White House was pilloried by Democratic activists and lawmakers for its lukewarm response, with one member of Congress describing it to CNN as “rudderless, pointless and hopeless.”
In a separate interview with Vanity FairHarris herself hinted that she was surprised by Dobbs’ ruling, recalling that her first response was to call her husband, Douglas Emhoff.
“I used to be like, they did it,” she told the outlet. “I used to be so sad.”
Meanwhile, Capehart joined Harris in lamenting her “rough” treatment by the media, complaining that “stories of staff departures were routinely presented as chaos in narratives that unfairly questioned Harris’ competence.”
This claim contradicts the report earlier this 12 months by NewsBustersa conservative media monitoring group found that ABC, CBS and NBC did not disclose the departures of 12 of Harris’ “core” employees between June 2021 and April 2022.
“Once they left, how again and again were their names mentioned on the networks? ZERO,” the group wrote in its report earlier this 12 months.
Capehart’s column, which also did not mention Harris’ task to deal with the “root causes” of illegal immigration, got here a day after excerpts from an upcoming book were published revealing that President Biden himself had expressed frustration with Harris since taking office, reportedly urging her “work in progress”.