The only policy plank we really know about the glossy “reintroduction of Kamala Harris” is that she now supports one of Donald Trump’s marquee policies.
Last weekend, the incumbent vice president tried to pass off Trump’s plan to eliminate taxes on tips as her own.
“When I am president, we will continue our fight for working families of America, including to raise the minimum wage, and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers,” she said.
The sudden campaign promise follows months of the presumptive presidential nominee avoiding interviews while flipping on nearly every issue on her platform, from bans on fracking to passing “Medicare for All.”
Yet the press has given Harris a free pass less than three months from Election Day and just a month away from the first votes being cast in Pennsylvania as the far-left candidate campaigns without any kind of comprehensive policy platform. When it comes to taxes on tips, however, Harris gave her position, and the episode offered another case study in media bias covering two identical positions from two very different candidates.
When former President Trump declared his crusade to eliminate taxes on tips earlier this summer, the headline from CBS News read, “Trump proposal to exempt tips from taxes could cost $250 billion.”
But when Harris offered her endorsement for the effort, CBS reported, “Vice President Kamala Harris is rolling out a new policy position, saying she’ll fight to end taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers.”
In other words, Trump is hellbent on ginning up the federal deficit as a consequence of political patronage, while Harris is a determined fighter for the service worker.
Here is NBC’s headline on Trump’s announcement: “Ending tips taxes? Restaurant workers and advocates say it’s a low priority.” And here was the headline from NBC this month: “Harris says she supports eliminating federal taxes on tips.” One is not like the other.
Newsweek, meanwhile, rebranded Trump’s tax proposal as “Kamala Harris’ tax proposal.”
Federalist Senior Editor Mark Hemingway wrote about why the media “won’t discuss real campaign issues” Tuesday.
“Harris still has not done a major interview, and has only made noises about doing an interview ‘before the end of the month,’” Hemingway wrote. “Meanwhile, major news organizations are just declaring themselves impotent preemptively. It’s pathetic. Here’s an actual CNN headline: ‘Trump’s campaign cranked up the pressure on Harris to do a major interview, hoping to goad her into a forum in which she’s been historically more vulnerable.’”
Hemingway continued:
Why is the Trump campaign the one to put pressure on her here? Isn’t it the press’s job to push politicians out of their comfort zones and make them answer tough questions? And here’s a terrifying thought: If Harris is “historically vulnerable” to doing something as basic as giving a press conference, should voters trust her to negotiate with hostile foreign leaders?
In short, the reason lies in the fact the press “don’t want Trump to win.”
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