Well, so much for substance! 

First off, we have to ask whether this is rumor or fact. Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller alleged on Twitter an hour ago or so that the vaunted Kamala Harris-Tim Walz media launch will only last less than a typical sitcom episode, sans commercials. Miller also claims to be "hearing" that CNN won't release a full transcript of the Dana Bash interview either.

That would be ... strange:

Hearing that @CNN will NOT be releasing the full transcript of all 18-minutes (total) of the interview with Kamala Harris and Human Blocking Dummy Coach Walz.

What’s being cut out???

— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) August 29, 2024

Supposedly, the interview was supposed to run for an hour. With two interview subjects taking their first (supposedly) adversarial questions since getting appointed to the ticket, especially on a ticket that has yet to publish its policy agenda, even an hour probably wouldn't be enough time to get in-depth answers to pressing issues on the economy, immigration, Israel and Gaza, crime, and health care. 

If that's true, then here's about a tenth of the interview right here. Bash asks why Harris' campaign has claimed that she will reverse practically all of her policy positions from 2019 and before while running for president now. Harris claims "my values have not changed," but doesn't explain why her policy positions did:

In all, the joint interview in Savannah with her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz – their first since becoming the Democratic presidential ticket – provided one of the clearest looks into Harris’ positions and her plans for the presidency.

“How should voters look at some of the changes that you’ve made?” Bash asked Harris. “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?” ...

“I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed,” she said. “You mentioned the Green New Deal. I have always believed – and I have 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.”

Apparently, Harris used the same exact sentence to explain her border and immigration policy reversals too:

And she pointed to her record as California attorney general, when she prosecuted gangs accused of cross border trafficking, as an indication of her values on immigration.

“My values have not changed. So that is the reality of it. And four years of being vice president, I’ll tell you, one of the aspects, to your point, is traveling the country extensively,” she said, pointing to her 17 visits to Georgia since becoming vice president. “I believe it is important to build consensus, and it is important to find a common place of understanding of where we can actually solve problems.”

If your values haven't changed, then ... your policies won't reflect your values? Or is it that your earlier policies didn't reflect your values? While this isn't quite a word salad -- it's at least cognizably coherent -- it's also utterly void of substance. It's not an explanation of a reasoned process by which a candidate has concluded that earlier positions should be abandoned for better policies. It reveals nothing at all about reversing just one policy, let alone an entire agenda of policy positions that Harris took publicly in 2019 and in 2020, including on CNN.

If that's the quality of the conversation, small wonder CNN will only run 18 minutes of it -- although that has still not yet been confirmed. The practice of taping an interview for editing and later airing is common, but the refusal to release a full transcript seems very odd for a news organization. This is the major-party ticket defending an incumbency; anything they say that's not specifically off the record should be reported, especially given the lack of media access to this ticket ever since it launched. 

Anyway, we'll have a live blog tonight of the interview quarterbacked by Beege, starting at 8:40 pm ET. It might not last long, but it will be fun -- so come join us!

Update: Did Team Kamala test out the "my values haven't changed" line? Because the riposte is just too easy:

"MY VALUES HAVE NOT CHANGED": Kamala Harris confirms she's still her Radical Left self who supports decriminalizing illegal immigration, the job-killing Green New Deal, eliminating private health insurance, banning fracking, and so much more. pic.twitter.com/gJYBduk3UH

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) August 29, 2024