Have Podium, Will Travel

Oh, the lengths they will go to prevent a Kamala Word Salad

Yesterday, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke briefly to reporters on the tarmac at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, where she stood behind a portable Vice Presidential podium and read prepared remarks from a binder.

Yeah.

Really.

Can you believe her staff set up a podium on the bloody tarmac, all so Kamala could say a few quick words about the prisoner exchange with Russia?

This is the lack of confidence Team Kamala has in their girl.

Guys, the Veep needs to say something to reporters about the prisoner exchange before she boards Air Force Two.

Are you kidding?! We can’t let her talk to reporters! What if she uses the phrase “in terms of” half a dozen times or, God forbid, says the American prisoners are now “unburdened by what has been?” It’s a risk we can’t afford to take!

I know! Let’s write a few prepared remarks and put them in a binder. We set up the portable Vice Presidential podium on the tarmac and let the Veep deliver the remarks before boarding the plane.

What do we do if the reporters ask follow-up questions?

Easy. We tell her the same thing we say to President Biden: Turn your back on them and walk away.

Trust me on this, guys. Team Kamala will move heaven and earth to prevent an off-the-cuff, extemporaneous Kamala Word Salad Moment between now and November 5.

Don’t let their cavalier attitude fool you. They know that the video clips of Kamala babbling on like a half-literate nincompoop are just as damaging to her as the video clips of President Biden wandering off Silver Alert-style in front of world leaders were to Joe.

They don’t care if Kamala looks ridiculous standing behind a portable Vice Presidential podium reading prepared remarks from a binder on the friggin’ tarmac. That’s preferable to a 15-second clip of the Democrat nominee spinning a nonsensical Word Salad.

When I look at the picture of Kamala standing behind her traveling podium reading prepared remarks, the very last thing I think is, “Wow. So presidential!”

If I’m honest, the first thing that popped into my head was that the Harris campaign should give the portable podium-hauling job to that dude who swiped Nancy’s podium on January 6.

This is an optics backfire.

Kamala doesn’t come off as presidential. Instead, she comes off as an overly managed, ill-prepared candidate who needs stage props to look convincing.

But when life gives you a lemon, stick it behind a portable podium and give it a prepared speech.

In 2020, the Biden campaign kept Joe on a short leash, hiding him in his Delaware bunker where he gave pre-scripted Zoom interviews to friendly news outlets.

Here we are four years later and once again, the Democrats are running a candidate who can’t be trusted to venture out of a protective bubble. But instead of hiding their candidate’s dementia, the campaign is hiding their candidate’s verbal incontinence and inability to articulate or defend her record.

Joe Biden endorsed Kamala as the Democrat nominee on July 21, and still this woman has not given a single interview or answered questions from reporters at a press conference.

But can you blame them for keeping her under wraps? Kamala gets defensive and snippy at even the mildest questions from friendly outlets. With only three months until the election, the Harris campaign can’t afford to let voters see this woman in a free-range setting.

If I were a betting gal, I’d say that if Team Kamala does agree to an interview, it will be with a late-night comedy show host like Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Fallon. There is no way they would risk an interview with the New York Times or Washington Post editorial boards. Even an interview with a pro-Democrat news anchor like George Stephanopoulos would be fraught with danger.

I can’t understand why Kamala is so eager to debate Donald Trump. Then again, Joe Biden was equally over-confident before he crapped the sheets at the CNN debate.

Remember the video Joe made in May challenging Trump to a debate that featured multiple cuts in 14 seconds because the old man couldn’t do it in one take? Boy, did that come back to haunt him.

In her campaign speech in Atlanta earlier this week, Kamala made a similar challenge to Trump, telling him that if he had something to say to her, he should “say it to my face.”

Tough words from someone terrified to speak directly to reporters without a prepared speech and a portable podium.

The woman who got flustered when Lester Holt pointed out that she had never been to the border isn’t going to transform into a rhetorical pugilist when it’s Donald Trump taking aim at her disastrous record. She’ll fall back on playing the victim while crying about racism and misogyny because that’s all she has.

On the plus side, since debate organizers provide a podium, Kamala can leave her portable version at home.