CSotD: That Interview — Pointed or Pointless?

I wasn’t sure who to start with this morning, so I decided to move the video to the top of the posting and start with the Rock Man from the Point!, whom I quote fairly often: “You see what you want to see, and you hear what you want to hear.”

You can catch his context on the video; it’s less than four minutes. And the Rock Man is a whole lot less partisan than anyone else we’ll hear from today, if you ignore the fact that the Point! is about a kid who lives in a land where being different is illegal.

Little Oblio is banished for being the Enemy Within, after all.

Dave Whamond takes an overview of the shifting perspectives on the right side of the aisle. In addition to refusing to do the 60 Minutes appearance, Dear Leader has canceled an interview with CNBC, another on NBC and an appearance before the NRA, the last of which seems a reliably friendly venue, though both Harris and Walz are gun owners.

Trump is making it hard for his acolytes to see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear, but god knows they’re hanging in there.

As noted here yesterday, his supporters and the both-sides media largely ignored the apparent psychotic break in which he quit answering questions at a town hall and swayed to music for over half an hour while a puzzled Kristi Noem vamped to fill the time as if everything was perfectly normal.

Nick Anderson (Tribune) noticed, as did a few others, but not the people who were seeing what they wanted to see and hearing what they wanted to hear, which included a man dancing to the Ave Maria.

And it should be noted that Clay Bennett (CTFP) ran this cartoon prior to the Dance Party, and prior to JD Vance quitting his evasions and declaring himself an election denier, amid increasing speculation that, should the GOP ticket win, he may get to sit in the Big Chair before their four years are up.

In any case, Harris’s appearance on Fox didn’t qualify as a softball interview, but, while most people were willing to admit she came out on top in her debate with Trump, there’s much more spin being applied to Bret Baier’s combative grilling.

Mike Luckovich has no problem in declaring a winner in an interview that began with Baier pelting Harris with tough questions, beginning with “How many illegal immigrants would you estimate your administration has released into the country over the past three-and-a-half years?”

She was quite offended and snapped, “Well, first of all, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner, first question. You don’t even say, ‘Hello. How are you?’”

Whoops, sorry. My bad. That was Donald Trump at his National Association of Black Journalist’s appearance.

Harris began to answer the question, or tried to, but Baier interrupted her after 10 seconds, and then twice more over the next seven seconds. In the first two-and-a-half minutes of the interview, he interrupted her seven times.

Bill Bramhall can’t possibly be the only person who noticed Baier’s interviewing technique. However, once she dug in her heels and insisted on being allowed to respond, that wasn’t a good thing either, according to the cartoonists in this

Juxtaposition of the Day

Lisa Benson — Counterpoint

Jeff Stahler — AMS

Stahler does note that Baier asked her if she thought Trump voters were stupid, which she denied, to what I hope was nobody’s surprise.

But the “Word Salad” trope feels like when cartoonists decided that Joe Biden’s fondness for ice cream set him apart from 44 other presidents — all but Garfield and W.H. Harrison — who were on record as eating ice cream.

“Word Salad” may also be the female equivalent of “mansplaining:” An invitation to STFU.

After all, any sentence more than 10 words long is unladylike, especially if it includes numbers and names of legislation.

But while Harris is known for long answers, she speaks very clearly and to the point.

At least Biden really did like ice cream.

Dana Summers (Tribune) figured out her message, despite nobody apparently having told him why she is going around the country making appearances and being interviewed. (In case you also missed it, she’s running for office against Donald Trump.)

The real head-scratcher is Gary Varvel (Creators)‘s declaration of a knockout, and his endorsement of Baier’s claim that Harris’s people signaled him to cut the interview short.

It’s not a matter of Varvel being dishonest; it is, rather, a case of him being gullible, and of failing to check for confirmation.

Rightwing sources said Baier had done a marvelous job and Harris had failed utterly, while centrist and liberal outlets saw it the opposite way, and, as the saying goes, if one person says it’s raining and one person says it’s sunny, the journalist’s job is not to quote them both. It is to look out the window.

It’s certainly not to report storms after only listening to one side.

Baier’s contention doesn’t hold water. Given the tenor of the interview, and my experiences on both sides of the microphone, if he smelled blood the last thing he’d do is cut things short. And once the interview is rolling, you ignore handlers anyway. They set it up, but they don’t direct it.

Also, he didn’t cut it short. The interview was announced as 25 to 30 minutes. It ran 26:40, as you can see for yourself on the video posted by Trump’s campaign.

With 4:06 left in the interview, Baier said he had two more questions, though they only got to one of them. But if four people were waving frantically to stop things, he wouldn’t have introduced new topics.

My suspicion, a mixture of experience, logic and distrust, is that “they” were his own people telling him to wrap it up. That’s what makes sense, that’s how it works, that’s how you turn out a 26:40 interview scheduled to be 25 to 30 minutes long.

But you might say something different after realizing you have, to use a vulgar but expressive phrase, “screwed the pooch” and feel your job is on the line.

Maybe I’m too distrustful, but it sure beats the opposite.

Here: Bonus video!