Harris’ CNN interview frustrates GOP and media—she’s so damn normal

Before Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ first sit-down interview aired on Thursday evening, Donald Trump was already attacking it. 

“She was sitting behind that desk, this massive desk, and she didn’t look like a leader today,” Trump said at an event in La Crosse, Wisconsin, roughly half an hour before the interview aired. “I’ll be honest. I don’t see her negotiating with President Xi [Jinping] of China. I don’t see her with [North Korean dictator] Kim Jong-un, like we did with Kim Jong-un.”

There was no massive desk. Harris and running mate Tim Walz conducted the interview with CNN’s Dana Bash while seated at a small table at a cafe in Savannah, Georgia. But since Trump was providing this bit of unadorned misogyny before the interview ran, his imagination apparently placed Harris behind something more substantial—something like the Resolute desk.

Trump’s attack on Harris’ appearance during the interview was a good signal of where Republicans went in their responses Thursday evening: prepackaged, disconnected from the truth, and weak.