'It sells': Trump-defending conservative admits one Harris moment 'will help her' win
CNN's Scott Jennings identified one particular moment in Kamala Harris' sit-down interview with Oprah Winfrey that might move the needle with fellow conservatives.
Winfrey expressed surprise that the vice president had revealed she's a gun owner during the recent debate against Donald Trump, and Jennings had to admit that he liked hearing Harris say, "If somebody breaks into my house, they're getting shot."
"I think that specific clip we played, it's the only clip I've seen from Harris in this entire election that made me think, 'Oh, this is going to help her candidacy,'" Jennings said. "I watched a good chunk of this thing last night. I mean, it was mostly a solid hour of the same sort of vacuous word-salad tossing that we've come to expect out of the vice president."
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"But that little clip actually, I think, it sells," he added. "I think that was a helpful moment for her, but the rest of it was really, really inane banter, and if you read the transcript of it, you would say, 'What?'"
Host Kasie Hunt pointed to Harris' follow-up remark, when she laughed and said her staff would probably have to clean up that statement about shooting an intruder.
"Of course, that was telling for me because part of what I think we've seen Harris do as she has emerged on the national stage is be very careful to try to say, I mean, it's – every politician does this, right?" Hunt said. "The poll-tested thing, that you're supposed to say, you're supposed to not make a mistake, but the fact that we got a moment from her that was so deeply authentic and she immediately thought, well, 'Oh, shoot.'"
Jennings tried to argue that Democratic candidates were always over-cautious, but former Republican pollster Sarah Longwell interrupted to say the vice president's remarks were part of a voter outreach strategy.
"She didn't really think that was a problem for her," Longwell said. "That was her being, like, 'Oh, I'm going to get in trouble for this.' She doesn't really think that, she knows there's a reason for her going out there saying, 'I'm a gun owner,' right?"
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