In a long, arduous career in PR, this commentator approached one task with all the enthusiasm of cleaning latrines for ten battalions. Interacting with the media.

Why? Because real reporters’ obsession is gettin’ ya in a “gotcha.” Pushing, prodding, twisting words out of context, and generally making nuisances of themselves. Especially hard-bitten, cynical, and largely antagonistic business journalists.

Ah, that word. Journalist. A concept sorely lacking in the “interview” of Kamala Harris by MSNBC/NBC’s Stephanie Ruhle.

Put aside that if you were playing the drinking game and had “dreams,” “ambitions,” “aspirations,” “opportunity economy,” and “middle-class family” on your Kamala bingo card, you were smashed before the first break. 

That her veepness trotted out the usual canards about the “border security bill” (that ensured the polar opposite). The “worst economy since the Great Depression” Donald Trump supposedly left behind (a fiction recently dispatched on these pages). Women dying because of post-Roe restrictions (as opposed to complications from medically induced abortions).

And that the airhead who once claimed that smaller tax refunds reflected a middle-class tax hike called Donald Trump “not very serious” about economic issues.

The real issue with the “interview” – the individual styled as “NBC News Senior Business Analyst” seemed curiously uninterested in analysis.

Talk about “not very serious.” Instead of questions, Ruhle offered up the Democratic candidate’s own campaign stump soundbites – and then re-affirmed and reinforced her responses. 

Don’t take my word for it. Check the transcript:

RUHLE: Over the last four years, there have been tremendous economic wins. And you have just laid out a big plan.

HARRIS: Yes.

***

HARRIS: (W)e’re going to have to make sure that the biggest corporations and billionaires pay their fair share …

RUHLE: Bill Gates just said it this week. If he was in charge of taxes, he would have paid more …

***

RUHLE: Steelworkers matter in this country. Unions matter.

HARRIS: Yes.

RUHLE: In 2016, Donald Trump connected with unions. He saw them. He — there was an emotional connection. But what he didn’t do was deliver policy.

In the last four years, we have seen huge wins in this country for unions, but not all unions have gotten behind you …

HARRIS: Well, let me go back to our just previous conversation. I’m very proud to have the endorsement of the steelworkers and almost every other major union in America …

(Camera cuts to Ruhle. Smile and affirming nod.)

***

RUHLE: Can I ask you about tariffs? Because you just mentioned it … Donald Trump’s sort of big idea is broad-based tariffs across the board. You and many others have said that would be, not only disastrous, but it would be a direct tax on the American consumer.

HARRIS: It would be a sales tax on the American people …

***

HARRIS: And when you look at my plans, you will see what those benefits will be, $25,000 down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers … Doing the work of a $6,000 child tax credit, doing the work of a $50,000 tax deduction for first-time small businesses, start-ups, because, right now …

RUHLE: That’s a real plan. 

HARRIS: It’s a real plan, because, right now — and, again, it’s about paying attention to the detail and being serious about it …

RUHLE: His plan is not serious when you lay it out like that …

***

RUHLE: But as somebody who supports free markets, who’s a capitalist, how do you go after price gouging without implementing price controls?…

HARRIS: So, just to be very frank, I am never going to apologize for going after companies and corporations that take advantage of the desperation of the American people.

***

RUHLE: On Friday, you are going to the border. Immigration is complicated. One of the issues is an economic one. And no one is eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. And I’m glad not to be talking about that.

***

RUHLE: (Y)our opponent almost every day seems to be talking about this. So I just want to ask you, yes or no … at any point in your life, have you served two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun …

(LAUGHTER)

HARRIS: On a sesame seed bun?

RUHLE: … working at McDonald’s, yes or no? That’s it.

HARRIS: I have.

***

RUHLE: You have laid out policy in great detail.

HARRIS: Yes.

***

There was more – but one gets the idea. Not pressing — puffing. Buildup in place of follow-up. Fact-checks? (Like suggesting company confirmation or work records on McD’s days?) We don’t need no stinking fact-checks!

But the last interchange was the pièce de resistance:

RUHLE: (P)eople don’t think often about reproductive rights being an economic issue. But it is, a woman’s ability to plan her future, her education, her life. 

Today, and in the last few days, Donald Trump keeps talking about it and how, in overturning Roe v. Wade, he helped women, he protected women. He says, they’re miserable today. They’re poorer today. They’re more vulnerable today. He said he will be the protector of women if elected.

Can you respond to that?

Could the one-note, all-“reproductive rights,” all-the-time candidate respond? She, in fact, seemed all too primed to do just that:

HARRIS: So, Donald Trump is also the person who said women should be punished for exercising a decision that they rightly should be able to make about their own body and their future.

Which makes one wonder (wink, wink, nod, nod): Might Ms. Harris have actually been tipped off just a bit as to possible subject matter?

Nah. Who needs that when the questioner is lobbing up not softballs, but beach balls?

Moreover, let’s get real here for a moment. Little if anything on cable “news” these days resembles actual reporting. The Ruhle “interview” is no different than the succession of lovefests featuring Fox News hosts and Ms. Harris’s opposite number.

It’s all good, concludes your battle-scarred correspondent wistfully. Just don’t call it journalism. And label Wednesday night’s event as it really was: not an interview – but a campaign rally.

Bob Maistros, a regular contributor to Issues & Insights, is a messaging and communications strategist, crisis specialist, and former political speechwriter. He can be reached at bob@rpmexecutive.com.