Yup, Harris said the "F" word!

No, not THAT "F" word! During a CNN Town Hall, Harris called Trump a fascist. In an interview full of "F" (fascist) bombs, Harris bombed yet another interview by refusing to answer questions.

During her appearance on CNN’s Town Hall with Anderson Cooper, Kamala Harris dropped several “F” bombs, saying she believes Donald Trump is a “fascist.” Asked if she believed Trump met the definition of a “fascist,” she said “Yes, I do.” That was just about the only question she answered directly during the entire Town Hall.

Cooper tried, repeatedly, to get Harris to answer questions on the border, on her economic policies, on efforts to remake the Supreme Court, and on the Israeli-Hamas war—on anything other than Donald Trump is akin to Adolf Hitler—but to no avail.

“Would she expand the Supreme Court? Would people who make $500,000 see their taxes increase? Would Americans pay for benefits for migrants crossing the border? How would she codify Roe v. Wade into federal law? And what about Gaza?,” the New York Times’ Reid J. Epstein and Lisa Lerer wrote about Harris’ responses to Cooper’s questions. “Her answers boiled down to: Donald Trump would be worse.”

Voters, Epstein and Lerer noted, “asked direct questions. Harris gave circular answers.” Her attacks on him, they wrote, “appeared more like dodges of questions about her own plans than crisp responses about what she would do as president.”

So, that’s going to be the question. Will not being Donald Trump be enough to be elected President of the United States? How, I wonder, will we know Trump is worse if Harris refuses to tell voters what she thinks, other than Trump is a “fascist” and is “unfit to lead.” What are her plans, other than she’s not Trump?

I’ll give Harris one thing—she’s steadfast—as in she steadfastly refuses to give anything other than evasive, gobbledygook (by the way, that’s an actual word) answers to questions other than “is Trump a fascist” or on abortion. Rather than “gobbledygook,” the Times’ called her answers “discursive tangents.” I guess that’s why I’m writing the FOCNN News, and not for the Times.

But let’s take her responses to Cooper’s questions about the border as an example. “Under Donald Trump,” Cooper asked, “you criticized the wall more than 50 times, you called it ‘stupid’, ‘useless’, and a ‘medieval vanity project’, is a border wall stupid?”

“Well,” Harris responded, “let’s talk about Donald Trump and that border wall, so remember when Donald Trump said Mexico would pay for it, c’mon, they didn’t,” and she then criticized Trump for not building as much of the wall as he said he would. “But,” Cooper reminded her, “you agreed to a bill that would give more than $650 million to continue building that wall.” Harris replied that she would work “across the aisle” for a “comprehensive border bill” that “deals with a broken immigration system.” You don’t think it’s stupid anymore, a clearly frustrated Cooper asked. “I think what he did [Trump] and how he did it did not make much sense.” But, “you did want to build some wall,” a now exasperated Cooper said. “I want,” said Harris, “to strengthen our border.” Now I know how my mom and dad must have felt when they asked “who broke that?”

Despite persistent questioning from Cooper, and credit where credit is due, he at least tried, respectfully, to elicit answers from Harris—she continued to dodge question after question. Later in the interview she was asked about the plight of Palestinians in Gaza and non-sequitur’d (my made-up word, yet another reason I don’t write for the Times) her way to instead talk about the high price of groceries. “For many people who care about this issue [Gaza], they also care about bringing down the price of groceries,” she said. That’s some head-scratching segue. “They also,” continued Harris, “care about our democracy and not having a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist.” Another “F” bomb. Seems her mission for the Town Hall was to sneak the “F” bomb into every sentence she could. In that case, mission accomplished.

When asked about giving specifics of her tax plan she actually said “we can’t have this conversation right now…it’s a very complicated situation.” At least, apparently, too complicated for Harris. But shouldn’t a candidate for President be able to explain their own tax plan? Oh, wait, you’d actually have to have a tax plan, at least one more specific than “tax the rich,” to explain.

Is not being Trump enough?

“It was frustrating to watch,“ Shadi Hamid, a columnist for the Washington Post said. “Maybe not being Trump is enough, but I think voters want to be inspired beyond lesser-of-two-evils arguments (or ‘vibes’), and she struggles to offer that.” Part of the problem, Hamid suggested, is that Harris “doesn’t have strong core convictions, so she often has to calculate what to say instead of just stating what she actually thinks.”

Matt Bai, another Washington Post columnist, said that he was “struck by the answers she doesn’t have at this late stage of the campaign.” Bai too, was critical of either her unwillingness, or inability, to answer questions. “She couldn’t answer a question about expanding the Supreme Court. She’s been asked about a thousand times about her shifting positions on fracking and health care, and somehow she hasn’t found a direct answer,” Bai observed. “I don’t really understand it. But I think if people are asking why she isn’t running away with this election, you saw the answer.”

Maybe it’s out of desperation, but I don’t see the “F” bomb working for Harris. Of all the things that voters know coming into this election—they know Trump a lot better than they know Harris. Many Democrats prophesied back in 2016 when Trump was elected that “democracy was dead,” and have repeatedly labeled Trump a “threat to democracy,” yet according to all the polls at least half the country’s voters remain unconvinced.

“Most people think of fascist regimes as places where secret police terrorize ordinary citizens, free media doesn’t exist and protest is forbidden. That’s probably not what most Americans remember of their experience of the Trump years,” New York Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote, “when this newspaper [The New York Times] more than doubled its circulation and Trump’s loudest critics could be heard from the minute Joe Scarborough woke them up to the hour Rachel Maddow put them to sleep.”

Will calling Trump a “fascist,” rather than answering questions from the press or voters at Town Halls, be enough to convince undecided, unmotivated, or persuadable voters? If the polls, which show Harris and Trump in a virtual dead heat, are any indication, the answer is no. “The electorate,” proclaims the New York Times this morning, “has rarely seemed so evenly divided.”

Some Republicans are using their own “F” word to describe Harris—saying she’s trying to hide her true far-left leaning beliefs behind a curtain of slogans and platitudes—that she’s faking it. Is the real choice in November between the “fascist” or the “faker?”

So, I have some unsolicited and likely unwanted advice for the Harris campaign. If she really wants to convince non-MAGA Republicans, otherwise right-leaning voters who are not especially happy with Trump, or those who might just sit this one out, she might want to start answering some “F”ing questions.