Ruhle Defends Her Harris Interview: You Know Why Kamala Is Not Answering Questions? Because She’s a Politician

BRZEZINSKI: “And the host of ‘The 11th Hour,’ Stephanie Ruhle joins us. Retired CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos, he’s an NBC News security and intelligence analyst, and staff writer at The Atlantic, Franklin Foer.”
SCARBOROUGH: “I mean, this is — I always say — “
BRZEZINSKI: “This is night of the thousand stars in the morning, Frank’s gonna be doing the trapeze in a couple of hours, wrestling bears — Marc, you’ll wrestle bears.”
FOER: “I can wrestle bears, too.”
BRZEZINSKI: “Yeah, yeah.”
SCARBOROUGH: “Stephanie, Mika likes watching Fox News.”
BRZEZINSKI: “No, I don’t like it. But I do watch it.”
SCARBOROUGH: “She keeps it on all day just to catastrophize.”
BRZEZINSKI: “No.”
SCARBOROUGH: “And yesterday I noticed that Howie Kurtz was saying that you launched a softball interview with Kamala Harris, and you seem to be the running banner for about 30 minutes — “
BRZEZINSKI: “Yeah, all — 30 minutes?! All day.”
SCARBOROUGH: “ — how what a softball interview this interview was. Of course, nothing, nothing like Donald Trump and Sean Hannity, I’m sure. But I’m just curious what your thoughts were about Fox News desperately suggesting that she bombed a softball interview?”
RUHLE: “Well, to Fox News, I would say, thank you, because as I learned from Donald Trump, all press is good press, so I am thrilled to be all over their airwaves all day long.”
SCARBOROUGH: “Could I buy one of your watches? Would you do a brand of watched I could buy?”
(Laughter)
RUHLE: “Yeah, it was great, because I was watching Fox News, and I’m now excited about Melania’s memoir, I’m going to have to pick that up this weekend. And I can get a silver coin that Donald Trump launched on Monday, obviously, one of the hundred grand watches. I haven’t gotten my sneakers yet, but I’m sure they can tell me where to get them. No, that’s nonsense. Obviously, for anybody who watched the interview I did with Vice President Harris, we sat down for 25 minutes and we talked about one single topic: the economy. It is the number one issue for voters. If Donald Trump would like to sit down and have that same conversation, I’m ready for you. I think it’s hugely important. It’s a vulnerability for both candidates. But it’s really tricky, Joe, because you obviously want to cover all of these topics, but to just do it with one candidate, it’s hard, because many people feel like she’s speaking in platitudes. She’s speaking about an economic vision, and she’s not giving details. She’s got an 80-page detailed policy proposal. Do I think that she answers every single question and gives people exactly what they want? She doesn’t. You know why? Because she’s a politician, and None of them do. They all speak in platitudes. But Donald Trump has given absolutely nothing except mass deportations, which would be a huge issue for our economy. And he just says, ‘I delivered you the best economy ever and I’m going to put across blanket tariffs.’ But the thing that I think she needs to answer for more is, despite all of the economic wins over the last four years, despite the fact that Donald Trump emotionally connected with that blue-collar worker but he didn’t deliver for that blue-collar worker, she needs to solve for why he still polls better on economic issues with voters, because that, to me, is mind-boggling. You know, when you talk to voters across the board, they say, ‘I don’t know what any politicians do for me, but I did get my taxes lowered.’ And she made it clear, when the individual tax cuts expire next year, the one group of people who will get their taxes raised are people who make over $400,000 a year. Now, a lot of people in blue cities and blue states are wondering what happens to that state and local tax deduction. Donald Trump has now said, ‘We’re going to lift that cap.’ He’s the one who put it on. We don’t yet know what she’s going to do.”