Opinion | Harris’ media blitz has revealed something rotten in the state of punditry

Vice President Kamala Harris is on a media blitz in the final stretch of the presidential campaign.

In recent days, Harris has chatted with the hosts of “The View” and drunk beer with Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show” and made appearances on the popular podcasts like “Call Her Daddy” and “The Breakfast Club” with Charlamagne tha God. She even called in to The Weather Channel ahead of Hurricane Milton’s landfall.

And on Wednesday evening, she took the boldest step of all, walking into the lion’s den of the most famous conservative TV network in the country: Fox News.

In an arena where Democratic voices go unrepresented, Democratic politicians are mocked and Democratic policies are mischaracterized, Harris made her case, unapologetically. Despite repeated interruptions and bad-faith framing from host Bret Baier, the vice president stood her ground and called out their mischaracterizations.

It seems to have worked. Searches for “Kamala Harris” rose dramatically as the interview aired, especially in the key swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, according to Google Trends.

But let’s be clear: Kamala Harris didn’t have to do this interview. And much of the discourse surrounding her media strategy reveals a double standard. Harris is being scrutinized in a way that her opponent, former President Donald Trump, is not. And with more than 8 million ballots already cast and millions more Americans headed to the polls for early voting, that double standard could have an effect.

I’m not saying Harris should be treated with kid gloves. As she acknowledged herself in Wednesday’s interview, “This is an election for president of the United States. It’s not supposed to be easy.”

But Trump’s argument for another term in the White House should be dissected under the same level of scrutiny that Harris has welcomed. But even though he’s a former president on his third White House campaign, Trump isn’t being held to account on his lack of tough interviews, dismal knowledge of policy or the anti-democratic tone of some of his remarks.

Let’s compare how their media strategy is being handled. While Harris was on her blitz of interviews, Trump cut short a town hall moderated by a supporter to sway and listen to music onstage for over half an hour. He’s canceled interviews with CNBC and CBS’ “60 Minutes,” often opting instead for the safe spaces of conservative news outlets.

In the appearances he has made, his lack of policy knowledge and absence of specific proposals is immediately apparent. Take his Univision town hall this past Wednesday. When asked by a farmer who would perform the labor often done by the millions of undocumented immigrants Trump wants to deport, the former president answered, “We have to have people that are great people come into our country. But we do want them in, and I want them in even more than you do.”

When asked about climate change, he cited his golf course: “I own Doral right next door, and we did that in a very environment — I get awards, environmental awards for the way I built it, for the water, the way I use the water, the sand, the mixing of the sand and the water.”

During a Fox News town hall with an all-female audience on Wednesday, Trump admitted his ignorance on in vitro fertilization, a key reproductive rights issue that congressional Republicans have repeatedly declined to protect. The former president said he had to ask Republican Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama, whom he described as a “fantastically attractive person,” to explain the procedure: “I said, explain IVF, very, IVF, very quickly, and within about two minutes I understood it. I said, no, no, we’re totally in favor of IVF.”

That’s despite referring to himself as “the father of IVF” just seconds earlier.

How has this contrast been received? With key pundits saying that Harris is too vague about her policies — despite the 80 pages of plans on her website — or dissecting small moments in interviews, like when she didn’t name a difference that she might have had with President Joe Biden over the last four years. These are not two candidates being judged by the same criteria.

There’s another double standard at work here too that Black women are all too familiar with: the tone of the two candidates.

During her Fox News interview, Harris matched Baier’s confrontational energy, refusing to be talked over and calling out his deceptive framing of Trump’s positions. Harris spoke passionately at a number of points, but at no point did she belittle Baier or shy away from tough questions. She even acknowledged him as a “serious journalist.”

It’s a stark contrast from Trump’s Tuesday interview before the Economic Club of Chicago. Facing a challenge from the moderator, the vastly more restrained Bloomberg editor John Micklethwait, Trump shot back, “You’re wrong. You’ve been wrong. You’ve been wrong all your life on this stuff.”

Upset with the coverage of certain news organizations, Trump has responded by saying that the government should revoke their licenses. At the National Association of Black Journalists convention earlier this year, he berated a journalist for asking what he thought was a “disgraceful” and “rude” question, saying, “Are you with ABC? Because I think they’re a fake news network, a terrible network.” Trump routinely calls journalists the “enemy of the people.”

Yet moments after the Fox News interview aired, It was Harris whom panelists described as “combative” and even “angry.”

This double standard is not about two individuals. It’s so much bigger than that. It’s about the direction of our democracy and whether voters are accessing all the information they need in order to make their decision between now and Nov. 5.

The bar has been set higher for Harris, even as it has continued to drop lower and lower for Trump, who still can’t manage to clear it. This isn’t just unfair to Harris, it’s unfair to the millions of voters who are watching all of this and trying to decide which direction the country should move in. We all deserve better.

For more thought-provoking insights from Symone Sanders-Townsend, Michael Steele and Alicia Menendez, watch “The Weekend” every Saturday and Sunday at 8 a.m. ET on MSNBC.