A Republican strategist with a background in political event planning wasn’t impressed by the optics of Kamala Harris’ speech Tuesday night at the Ellipse in Washington D.C.
“I plan political events for a living, and I think this was political malpractice to put her in front of this White House,” Brad Todd, a GOP strategist and media consultant, said on CNN moments after Harris’ concluded her speech, billed as her campaign’s closing argument.
“Sixty-eight percent of Americans think that the country's on the wrong track and they blame Joe Biden, and increasingly they're blaming Kamala Harris. By standing in front of that White House tonight, she's going to own all 68% of that disapproval,” Todd told CNN’s Anderson Cooper and a panel analyzing the speech.
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Todd suggested that Harris delivered the speech at the Ellipse for “a comfort reason,” adding that Northwest Washington, D.C “is about her best precinct in America.”
“Everybody likes her there,” he noted. “She should’ve been in the union lodge in Philadelphia, or in Pittsburgh tonight, that would have done her a lot more good.”
Todd also noted in his post-speech analysis that Harris didn’t do much to try to appeal to Nikki Haley's supporters.
“I think the Haley voters had to be looking at this as like a Christmas present they opened up and it was socks, you know, they got nothing new from her, nothing that wasn't in her convention speech, frankly, and I don't think this moves the ball for her here at the end,” he added.
But CNN’s Dana Bash pushed back on which politician’s actions Tuesday night should be considered malpractice, with the news host suggesting that Haley’s comments on Fox News “is malpractice.”
“There's only one reason that Donald Trump has not used Nikki Haley, the way that she said she's willing to be used for political, and that is because he can't get past his grievances with her because she was his opponent, and she was winning a sizable amount of the vote even when she was not in the race,” Bash said. “And those are the exact voters that the Harris campaign believes are gettable.”
Watch the clip below or at this link.