Ruh Roh: CNN's Brian Stelter Gives Away the Game in 'Analysis' of Kamala Harris' Fox News Interview

My colleague Jennifer Oliver O'Connell wrote about the interview Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris did with Fox News Wednesday night, appropriately describing it as a "train wreck" from start to finish.

It was clear right away that Harris was not used to fielding tough questions from reporters, something I would bet she's only had to do a handful of times (if even that much) since her career in public office began in the early 1990s.

It was so bad for her, in fact, that Fox News anchor Bret Baier noted afterward that several of her handlers at one point off-screen were gesturing to him, "waving their hands like, 'it's gotta stop!'" Baier also revealed that they tried the ice-the-kicker trick by arriving late for the interview, which had the net effect of cutting it short of what it should have been.

Another revealing moment, as it turns out, happened on CNN, where media hall monitor Brian Stelter laughably suggested that Harris "walked into a Trump campaign field office" when she sat down with Baier, who Stelter proclaimed presented himself as a "Trump surrogate" during the course of the interview.

But it was what Stelter said about Kamala Harris' performance itself that was especially noteworthy for reasons I'll explain in just a moment. Firstly, here's Stelter sharing a quote from Harris campaign spokesman Ian Sams, who essentially said that Harris would look "tough" simply because she showed up for an interview on an "adversarial" network like Fox News.

Note the time stamp in the video - 6:24 pm ET:

This Fox interview "says something about the two candidates," @IanSams says. "It says that, you know, she's tough, she's strong, she can go toe to toe with adversarial people, and Donald Trump's weak and withdrawn and retreating to his comfort zone." pic.twitter.com/JZITp0k7mk
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) October 16, 2024

Roughly 15 minutes later, look at how Stelter took Sams' talking point and turned it into his own talking point about how well he thought this interview made Harris look with Fox News viewers.

After agreeing with former Biden campaign alum Ashley Allison on how the interview was supposedly a "win" for Harris, Stelter said, "Instead of getting to debate Trump again, she got to debate Bret Baier. And a lot of viewers are gonna come away saying, 'Wow, she's willing to do that. That's a sign of toughness and strength.'"

Interesting, isn't it? Campaign spox Sams says it, a Biden alum echoes it, and Stelter runs with it as factual. And voilà, a media narrative is born:

Listening to how Kamala Harris answered @BretBaier's questions, I think she was employing a "Google strategy" – encouraging Fox viewers to search what she was saying – since many of the points she made are rarely heard on Fox. She also plugged her campaign website at the end. pic.twitter.com/dVMcUirch1
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) October 16, 2024

I don't know what's more amusing here - that Stelter so obviously adopted a Kamala Harris campaign talking point so quickly during a segment or the fact that in the very same segment Stelter, sounding like a Harris spokesman himself, accused Baier of deliberately positioning himself as a campaign surrogate.

You really can't make it up - and you don't have to, because Brian Stelter himself accidentally exposed how the media/Democrat industrial complex works without really even trying.

Gotcha.