It's not exactly a secret that Kamala Harris is deliberately seeking out friendly ground for her "interviews" since becoming the Democratic Party's presidential nominee. Nor is it a secret that these interviews haven't exactly gone well for her. No matter how much she tries to stack the deck in her favor, she doesn't come across well. Generally speaking, you have to go to conservative-leaning outlets to get a more fair assessment of her performances, though.

For example, last month she did a joint interview with her running mate Tim Walz on CNN conducted by anchor Dana Bash—and it went terribly. That didn't stop Bash from defending Kamala's performance in a subsequent interview. Of course. 

Kamala just did another interview, this time with anchor Stephanie Ruhle on MSNBC, and once again, it didn't go well. Kamala just has a problem with actually answering questions. Heck, even Ruhle conceded this point, although she still proceeded to play defense for her. 

But, the New York Times actually trashed the interview—and Kamala's performance.

"In her discussion with a friendly interviewer, the vice president again presented herself as a champion of the middle class and hit many of the same themes from her pro-business economic speech earlier in the day," wrote Reid Epstein of the New York Times. "She largely avoided direct questions about how she would govern and why some voters remain fond of former President Donald J. Trump’s stewardship of the economy."

According to Epstein, there were three takeaways from the interview:

1. Harris had roundabout answers to open-ended questions.
2. She avoided a looming scenario: What if Democrats lose the Senate?
3. A hard-hitting Harris interview is still yet to come.

When the New York Times is calling out Kamala for basically avoiding answering questions, you know it was really, really bad. Epstein was not particularly impressed by the way she avoided the question about why voters feel Trump is better suited for the economy. He also was not impressed that when Harris was asked how she would respond to people who feel her policies aren’t for them, she simply claimed her plan is for anyone with “dreams and aspirations.”

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But, perhaps the biggest of these is number three, with Epstein acknowledging what has been obvious to those of us on the right: Kamala has yet to do a real, hard-hitting interview.

"Since Ms. Harris began granting more interviews in recent days, her media strategy has been to sit with friendly inquisitors who are not inclined to ask terribly thorny questions or press her when her responses are evasive," Epstein wrote. "Nothing about that changed during her interview with Ms. Ruhle before her audience on MSNBC, the liberal cable channel whose viewers overwhelmingly favor Democratic candidates."

It’s not quite clear what Ms. Harris gained, aside from giving her campaign aides the ability to say she held a one-on-one cable television interview.

For the vice president, speaking with Ms. Ruhle was roughly in the same ballpark as Mr. Trump having one of his regular chats with Sean Hannity of Fox News.

Last week, Ms. Ruhle openly showed her preference for Ms. Harris over Mr. Trump during an appearance on Bill Maher’s HBO program. And when she interviewed Mr. Biden in May 2023, Ms. Ruhle did not press him after his stumbling answers and praised him throughout the 14-minute discussion.

So it went with Ms. Harris. Ms. Ruhle joined Ms. Harris in attacking Mr. Trump (“His plan is not serious, when you lay it out like that”) and avoided posing tricky questions about positions Ms. Harris supported during her 2020 presidential campaign or what, if anything, she knew about Mr. Biden’s physical condition or mental acuity as his own campaign deteriorated.

Which is perhaps why Ms. Harris agreed to the interview in the first place.

In other words, no one, not even the liberal media, is fooled by her new strategy of doing softball interviews with zero substance.