Harris Spends an Hour in the Warm Embrace of Howard Stern

 

Opinion

Harris Spends an Hour in the Warm Embrace of Howard Stern

Oct. 8, 2024

 

Michelle Cottle

By Michelle Cottle

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/02/opinion/harris-howard-stern.html

Opinion Writer

 

Who says Kamala Harris’s unconventional media tour won’t reveal anything of note? On Tuesday, she did an hourlong sit-down with Howard Stern, the satellite radio host, and among the juicy bits we learned is that the V.P. isn’t a napper; that she digs Doritos and jigsaw puzzles; that her favorite F1 driver is Lewis Hamilton; that she went to see U2 at the Sphere; and that a rare area of musical agreement between her and Doug, her husband, is their love of Prince.

 

Yes, folks hoping to find serious policy talk on the Stern show were out of luck. But honestly, any voters still undecided at this late date are unlikely to be making their decision based on the nitty-gritty of the candidates’ tax plans.

 

The goal of these chats is to help voters feel as if they know Harris, so the personal tidbits serve a purpose. And in terms of reaching a range of listeners, I’m guessing Stern’s audience doesn’t overlap excessively with fans of Oprah and “The View.” (I mean, when I tuned into the show a little early, it was just in time to hear Stern make an obscene crack about an octopus.)

 

Also, who could resist the opportunity to outsource some Trump bashing to a professional trash-talker like Stern, who famously disdains the MAGA king?

 

Stern got the political talk rolling by noting that he doesn’t even like to watch “Saturday Night Live” make fun of Harris because there’s just too much at stake this election. From there, the softballs he lobbed fell into a couple of big categories:

 

Talking up her biography, especially her early work as a prosecutor. “Were you a wreck?” he asked about her first cases. “What was that like?” He had her talk about how her decision to become a prosecutor stemmed partly from having had a high school friend who was sexually abused by her stepfather. And he invited her to revisit some of the more brutal cases she dealt with. “To me you’re the law-and-order candidate,” he said, “and yet they try to paint you as a leftist who wants people running through the streets committing crimes.”

 

Marveling at how horrible Donald Trump is, in so many different ways: Did you ever think you would see a Republican not embracing NATO? What about the revelation in Bob Woodward’s new book that Trump was secretly sending Covid test kits to Vladimir Putin when they were in short supply at the height of the pandemic?

 

The Stern stop wasn’t the stretch some people might think. For all his shock-jock nastiness, Stern has become a regular political stop, hosting heavy hitters including Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.

 

I’ve talked to campaign people about this media strategy, and they make the point that Harris needs to reach people where they are. Fair enough.

 

In general, Stern was a little too openly butt-smoochy for my taste, but I like a little more spice in my political interviews. So my vote for Harris’s next stop? “Hot Ones.”

 

Michelle Cottle writes about national politics for Opinion and is a host of the podcast “Matter of Opinion.” She has covered Washington and politics since the Clinton administration. @mcottle