Vice President Kamala Harris delivered another awkward, two-minute “word salad” monologue during an interview with Oprah Winfrey on Thursday, leaving the live audience completely silent.
The interview, which included unusual moments such as Harris’s comment about being prepared to shoot anyone who breaks into her home, concluded with the vice president’s lengthy and perplexing speech.
“We love our country. I love our country. I know we all do. That’s why everybody’s here right now. We love our country. We– we take pride in the privilege of being American and this is a moment where [pause] we can and must come together as Americans, understanding we have so much more in common than what separates us. Let’s come together with [pause] the character that we are so proud of about who we are, which is we are an optimistic people,” she began.
“We are an optimistic people. Americans by character are people who have dreams and ambitions and aspirations. We believe in what is possible, we believe in what can be, and we believe in fighting for that,” Harris added.
“That’s how– that’s how we came into being, because the people before us understood that one of the greatest expressions [pause] for the love of our country, one of the greatest expressions of patriotism is to fight for the ideals of who we are, which includes freedom to make decisions about your own body, freedom to be safe from gun violence, freedom to have access to the ballot box, freedom to be who you are and just be the love, who you love, openly and with pride. Freedom to just be,” she said.
That lengthy response led the host to respond with a straight face: “Hmmm….”
Harris went on to conclude: “And that’s who we are; we believe in all that, and so this is a moment where we stand knowing what we are fighting for. We’re not fighting against, it’s what we’re fighting for.”
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Mediaite reported: “Throughout the monologue, Winfrey could be seen looking away from Harris and around the room.”
Harris finally agreed to a sit-down interview late last month, more than 35 days after essentially being anointed as the Democratic Party presidential candidate by Joe Biden, but even within the friendly confines of CNN, she still struggled with her responses.
Conservative activists and media outlets took to X to comment specifically on a clip from host Dana Bash’s interview with Harris, where the VP discussed the reasons behind her evolving policy positions since assuming the Democratic presidential nomination.
In the clip of the interview, which will air Thursday night on CNN, anchor Dana Bash asked, “Generally speaking, how should voters look at some of the changes that you’ve made? … Is it because you have more experience now, and you’ve learned more about the information? Is it because you were running for president in a Democratic primary? And should they feel comfortable and confident that what you’re saying now is going to be your policy moving forward?”
“Dana, I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed,” Harris admitted. “You mentioned the Green New Deal. I have always believed, and I’ve worked on it, that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time. We did that with the Inflation Reduction Act.”
“Gobbledygook,” conservative commentator Steve Guest wrote on the X platform. “The definition of a deadline is ‘the latest time or date by which something should be completed’.”
Noah Rothman, senior writer at the National Review, called her response “rambling.”
