MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle enters the running for vice president Kamala HarrisShe stressed that she doesn’t need to answer policy questions posed by the press because “she’s not running for perfection, but against Trump.”
Ruhle defended Harris on Friday’s episode of “Real Time with Bill Maher” after host Bill Maher criticized the vice president’s recent comments about her plans for a post-war Middle East as hollow.
“He’s in a difficult position because Joe Biden is currently the commander in chief and he’s the vice president,” Ruhle told Maher. “So it’s very difficult for anybody in his position to thread this needle and say, ‘This is what we should do, this is our plan’ when he’s the current commander in chief.”
“He’s in a weird position, like in an improv show, of being like, ‘Yes,’ ‘Yes, to what he’s doing, and I think we should do this,’ so that’s especially difficult.”
Harris adviser denies lack of interviews: ‘She’s a very busy person’
MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle sided with Vice President Kamala Harris during her appearance on “Real Time with Bill Maher.” (Screenshot/HBO)
Fellow panelists, new York Times Columnist Bret Stephens asked Ruhle an “honest question,” asking if Harris was being “vague” for political reasons or “does she just have no idea?” Ruhle insisted it wasn’t an “honest question” because she would never say Harris “has no idea.”
“I’m an undecided voter. I would never vote for Trump, but I’m not sure I want to vote for Kamala,” Stephens told Ruhle. “And my fear is that she really doesn’t have a very good sense of what she wants to do as president. It would be great for her to sit down with you (Bill Maher), or George Stephanopoulos, or you, Stephanie.”
He later added, “It would not be a stretch to ask Kamala, ‘Tell me, would you be in favor of a Palestinian state if Hamas were to run that state? Yes or no?'”
Vice President Kamala Harris is facing criticism for not giving many interviews to the press. ( (AP Photo/Matt Rourke))
“And let’s say you don’t like his answer. Are you going to vote? Donald Trump?” Ruhle shot back. “Kamala Harris is not running to be perfect. She’s running against Trump. We have two choices. And so there are some things you may not know the answer to. And in 2024, unlike 2016, which is the case for a lot of the American people, we know exactly what Trump will do, who he is and what kind of threat he poses to democracy.”
“Stephanie, the problem a lot of people have with Kamala is we don’t know her response to anything, okay?” Stephens reiterated.
“But you know the answer to everything he says!” Ruhle interrupted.
“And that’s why I would never vote for him and people shouldn’t vote for him,” Stephens continued. “But people are also expected to have some idea of what the program of the person they’re voting for is! You shouldn’t say, ‘Well, you have to vote for y because x is him and the other.’ Let’s find out a little more. And I don’t think it’s too much that she should sit down for an actual interview, rather than an article in which she describes her feelings about growing up with a nice lawn in Oakland.”
“All I’ll say is this – when you move to Nirvana, give me your real estate broker’s number and I’ll be your neighbor. We don’t live there!” Ruhle said.
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens and MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle got into a tense debate over Vice President Kamala Harris’ refusal to answer serious policy questions from the press. (Screenshot/HBO)
When he and Maher mocked Stephens for remaining undecided, the columnist told her she was among millions of Americans “whom Kamala will have to persuade if she wants to win.”
Ruhle later said to Stephens, “Have you ever played the game ‘Would You Rather’? Because that’s what voting for president is all about, right?”
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Earlier in the conversation, Ruhle agreed with Maher that Trump was a “threat to democracy” and defended Trump. ABC News moderators’ uneven fact-checking Trump vs Harris in the presidential debate.
“When Donald Trump lies constantly, you don’t say, ‘Nobody cares.’ That’s our job in the media — when people complain that ‘Donald Trump has been fact-checked more than Kamala Harris,’ you’re absolutely right to say that he has! You know why? He’s lied more!'” Ruhle said.
