In a surprising turn of events, the New York Times actually criticized Vice President Kamala Harris’ objectively terrible performance during the CNN town hall on Wednesday, pointing out that she responded to “direct questions” with “circular answers” — meaning long-winded word salads with zero substance.
New York Times writers Reid J. Epstein and Lisa Lerer published a critique of Harris’ performance on Thursday morning, highlighting her failure to directly answer a single question.
They noted in the piece that Harris responded to “one fairly straightforward question from a self-described Jewish independent voter about how she would deal with antisemitism on college campuses” with a five-minute answer devoid of any substance, but filled with attacks on former President Donald Trump.
“In an answer that stretched for more than five minutes, she briefly touched on hate crimes but then jumped into a discursive tangent that addressed Mr. Trump’s reported invocations of Hitler, his relationships with Kim Jong-un and Vladimir V. Putin and his actions during the coronavirus pandemic,” the New York Times writers explained.
They went on to explain that this answer was “illustrative of a pivot Ms. Harris made throughout the night from the short, sharp and pointed questions that were asked of her to the long, winding answers she preferred to give.”
The writers further explained that Harris would have likely performed better in a debate setting versus a town hall, as she is better at riling up her opponent than she is at actually forming coherent thoughts.
“Attacking Mr. Trump, it turns out, is more effective when he’s standing right there. Ms. Harris’s strong performance in her first — and only — presidential debate against her rival demonstrated her ability to bait him into a misstep,” Epstein and Lerer argued. “But without him standing nearby, her attacks on him appeared more like dodges of questions about her own plans than crisp responses about what she would do as president.”
Of course, the New York Times authors still had to try to defend Harris and attack Trump — claiming that the former president’s decision “may not be the best for voters eager to size up the candidates.” This unbelievably ridiculous assertion is blatantly a defense of Harris, as Trump has made his positions remarkably clear in all of his public appearances and interviews. Voters who pay even a small amount of attention know exactly where Trump stands on issues, but they don’t know where Harris stands because she refuses to tell them. Whether it is during a debate, a town hall, or one of the very few interviews she has given, Harris dodges every question she receives with either a long-winded word salad or an attack on Trump.
These New York Times writers weren’t the only Democrats to criticize Harris’ town hall performance, as even former Obama adviser David Axelrod deemed the even a “word salad city.”
David Axelrod says Kamala Harris has a habit of going to “word salad city” when she doesn’t want to answer a question 🤣
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 24, 2024
CNN also criticized Harris’ performance for similar reasons:
CNN’s Scott Jennings roasts Kamala over her town hall performance last night: “She’s terrible on her feet when she gets unexpected questions, and simultaneously she can’t even answer the expected questions.”pic.twitter.com/nX20OJuo8j
— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) October 24, 2024
