Harris aide urged ‘The View' hosts to ask again after VP flubbed question on differences with Biden
'As you showed the famous clip there on 'The View,' she gives that answer, and our book reports her aides backstage, head in their hands. They try to get the hosts to actually do the question again, to hopefully revise her answer, which she never does,' Josh Dawsey of the Wall Street Journal told MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' on Tuesday, explaining that Harris was unwilling to differentiate herself from Biden.
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Dawsey, Washington Post reporter Isaac Arnsdorf and New York Times reporter Tyler Pager's new book, '2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,' was released on Tuesday.
Harris sat down with the co-hosts of 'The View' in October 2024, as liberal host Sunny Hostin asked the former vice president if there was anything she would have done differently than Biden over the course of their administration to date.
Harris responded, 'there is not a thing that comes to mind.' Her response quickly went viral and was widely viewed as a misstep, given Biden's unpopularity and Harris passing up a chance to create some respectful distance.
Hostin initially asked Harris about the biggest specific difference between a potential Harris presidency and Biden's presidency. The then-vice president said the two were obviously two different people and said she planned to focus on home healthcare.
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3 Reporters Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf join Morning Joe to discuss their new book '2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America'.
MSNBC
The new book explains that Harris aide Stephanie Cutter asked two of the co-hosts to try asking Harris the question again.
'Backstage on The View's set in Manhattan, Rob Flaherty, a deputy campaign manager, put his head into his hands and swore. During the next commercial break, Stephanie Cutter went to cohosts Whoopi Goldberg and Ana Navarro to ask them to try the question again, but Harris didn't get a second chance. After the interview, Harris knew she'd messed up and asked how big the problem was,' the authors wrote.
3 Harris sat down with the co-hosts of 'The View' in October 2024.
ABC
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An adviser said her answer on the liberal ABC talkshow was 'the defining error of the campaign,' the authors reported.
Harris didn't give the answer she prepared with her aides, which according to the authors, praised Biden and emphasized that she didn't want to look back and critique their administration.
3 US President Joe Biden speaks during a conference of the Advocates, Counselors and Representatives for the Disabled (ACRD) at the Sofitel Hotel in Chicago, Illinois, on April 15, 2025.
AFP via Getty Images
The prepared answer also acknowledged that she was her own person.
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Her aides also encouraged her to mention that she planned to appoint a Republican to her cabinet, which the former vice president did mention towards the end of the interview.
Dawsey said during the MSNBC appearance on Tuesday that Harris didn't want to create public distance from Biden.
'She thinks it won't be authentic, she believes that it wouldn't work,' he said.
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Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Rosie O'Donnell: ‘I Look At America, And I Feel Overwhelmingly Depressed'
Type Rosie O'Donnell's name into Google, and the first autocorrect suggestion is just one word. That word isn't related to her pioneering, 11-time Emmy-winning daytime talk show, which ran for six seasons in the late 90s, and led to her becoming known in the US media as the 'queen of nice'. It isn't based around her early work as a stand-up career, which was followed by an acting career that saw her sharing the screen with everyone from Tom Hanks and Demi Moore to Madonna (with whom she remains close friends) and Elizabeth Taylor. It isn't even about Rosie's tumultuous time as a presenter on the American panel show The View, her work as a charity campaigner and advocate, or her family life. No, that word is simply 'Trump'. Rosie first publicly crossed paths with the man who would go on to be elected president of the United States almost 20 years ago, in 2006, when she was an anchor on The View, and he was still best known as the face of the reality show The Apprentice. At that time, Trump was also the owner of the Miss USA pageant (a title he retained until 2015, the year before he became president), which was then facing controversy due to the behaviour of its recently-crowned winner. To settle the matter, Trump gave a press conference defending the young woman in question, insisting she should be given a second chance by the American public, and that she would be allowed to retain her crown. When this became a discussion point on The View, Rosie shared her take that Trump wasn't one who should be considered a 'moral authority' in any scenario. 'Left the first wife, had an affair, left the second wife, had an affair, had kids both times… but he's the moral compass for 20-year-olds in America?' Rosie opined, to rapturous applause and laughs from both the audience and her fellow panellists (including future Fox News presenter Elisabeth Hasselbeck), after swooping over her hair and launching into a Trump impersonation. 'Donald, sit and spin, my friend,' she continued, calling his business credentials into question and branding him a 'snake-oil salesman'. Trump swiftly hit back, branding the talk show star a 'real loser', and sparking a feud that has now spanned almost two decades. As the years rolled on, Trump took every opportunity to publicly bash Rosie, repeating his 'loser' jibe in various iterations, as well as insulting everything from her appearance and her career to her personal life – including after he began his first presidential campaign. In 2015, for instance, when Fox News' Megyn Kelly questioned his use of terms like 'fat pigs,' 'dogs,' 'slobs' and 'disgusting animals' to describe women he disagreed with, Trump responded: 'Only Rosie O'Donnell.' Rosie was on his mind yet again during one of his now-infamous debates against fellow candidate Hillary Clinton the following year, when he stated: 'I said very tough things to [Rosie, but] I think everybody would agree that she deserves it and nobody feels sorry for her.' It's perhaps unsurprising, then, that when it was announced at the end of 2024 that Trump would be returning to the White House, Rosie made a bold decision. Quietly, she packed up her life, and moved herself and her 12-year-old child across the Atlantic to Ireland, where the small family now resides. 'I needed a place where I could slow it down and remove him from the scary place he lives in my psyche,' she tells HuffPost UK. The move has been life-changing for Rosie, but it still hasn't kept her name out of Trump's mouth. As recently as March, he was still taking shots at Rosie, after a White House reporter asked a question about her while the president was hosting Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin. Despite everything she's been through in the last 20 years as a result of her past drama with Trump, culminating in her moving 3,000 away to another country, Rosie is adamant there's nothing she'd do differently. 'I have no regrets,' she insists. 'I do say to myself sometimes, 'what are the chances that the one guy that I exposed for being a misogynist and a sexist pig on The View would become the president of the United States, and would still be hung up on the fact that I told the truth about him?'. I think to myself, 'boy, my life would be easier if this hadn't happened'.' Rosie shares: 'I also think to myself, 'why me?'. With the president of the United States going after me, calling me a fat, ugly, unsexy, disgusting, gay, liberal pig for 20 years…? And to have the people who follow him feel emboldened to say things to me, sometimes, as well. Is that something I'd wish on anybody? It's really not.' Looking back to the early years of Trump's insults against her, she admits: 'When he was doing all that, I really firmly believed that the National Organisation For Women was going to try to file a suit against the blatant misogynistic harassment that he was doing. But nobody did. Nobody called. Everybody laughed! People thought that it was funny – Rosie vs. Trump. 'They asked me to do a Doritos commercial with him for the Super Bowl, and I said, 'not on your fucking life'. And they offered me $3 million to be on one season of the Celebrity Apprentice, and I told them to sit and spin. He thought that I would want to cash in on this little tirade that we did, you know? And the answer was no. I don't want to be around him, in his presence.' 'He's been a very… shocking addition to my reality,' Rosie says, which is ultimately what motivated her to leave America. She notes that, in an attempt to discredit her continued arguments against Trump's presidency, many of her detractors will point out that she has now left the US for a new life overseas. 'Well,' she counters. 'I knew I wasn't up for this battle. But I still believe in the virtue of the fight. I just personally couldn't do it. The cost was too high for me.' It wasn't just Rosie's 'own self-preservation' she was thinking of when she chose to leave her life in the US behind, but also that of her 12-year-old, Clay, who is non-binary and autistic. 'I have a little 12-year-old who has autism that I am the only parent of, and so I have a responsibility to keep myself healthy and balanced,' she explains. 'I knew what [the Trump administration was] planning to do, because I read Project 2025. I know what he's capable of. And I didn't want to put myself through another four years of him being in charge, in any way, shape or form. 'So, I picked up and left before the inauguration – because I wasn't going to take any chances. And we moved.' Being the mother of a non-binary child, Rosie is all too aware of the negativity currently being aimed at the transgender, and otherwise gender non-conforming, communities (or, as she describes, it: 'I wouldn't say it's negativity, I would say it's like homicidal delirium'). 'Trans people have always existed, and they're always going to exist,' she says, describing the vitriol aimed at transgender people in recent years as 'terrifying'. 'But you know, what fascists do is they pick minority groups and then they prey on them,' she continues. 'And the 'weakest' part of the LGBTQIA+ group are trans people. They're the smallest majority, they're publicly ridiculed, their lives are threatened, they're killed and there's obscene violence against them.' Rejecting calls from certain gay, lesbian and bisexual groups who buy into anti-trans rhetoric, Rosie observes: 'I think that for the gay community to discriminate against other members of the community is wrong. The variety of our community is so thrilling. And to take out one of the colours diminishes them all.' 'When I see trans people spoken about in less than human terms –' she adds, before bringing up the British author JK Rowling, whose own commentary about the trans community has made her a divisive figure in the last few years. Rosie recalls how she actually gave Rowling her first US television interview shortly before Harry Potter arrived in America, even presenting her with a typewriter as a gift, after learning that she wrote out her manuscripts by hand. 'What happened to that woman?' Rosie ponders. '[She] has become the worst person speaking out publicly about trans people. And it is tragic for me to watch what she's doing. It's unfathomable.' 'There's some bad trauma that she's dealing with. She was in a very violent relationship at one point,' she says, referring to Rowling's past disclosures about being a survivor of domestic abuse. 'And listen, we all have our burdens of our past. Every human living, you get to be the age you are – you got stories. And she's got some stories she needs to tend to. Maybe not in the public eye. 'I think she, one day, will go, 'I was wrong'. And she will have to, because she's not a stupid woman, and if she's ever going to write anything again… she has to clean her window on the inside.' As for watching Trump's second stint in office from afar, Rosie laments: 'I think it's as bad as everyone worried it would be. 'I believe fascism has taken a foothold in the United States. And with this new bill – that allows him to have his own secret police, and the budget for that [being] greater than the money we give to Israel, which is already unbelievably high – I look at America, and it feels tragic. I feel sad. I feel overwhelmingly depressed. I don't understand how we got here.' Trump's second term in office, Rosie believes, is already 'exponentially worse' than his first. She explains: 'The Supreme Court is stacked with right-wing idealists and Christian nationalists and people of questionable moral standing. 'I wish that they would have packed the court, that he would have enlarged the numbers so that there would be balance of some sort again. But it hasn't happened, and it's not going to happen.' 'This is what happens when democracies die,' she continues. 'I believe we, as a human species, can do better than what we're doing. And we, as the United States, can do better than what is happening right now. And it may be too late. That's my worst fear. 'I don't want to be a doomsdayer, but I think that the writing is on the wall. And it does not look good.' Rosie traces Trump's initial foray into politics in the 2010s back to his days on The Apprentice – a show she points out, at its peak, was pulling viewing figures that rivalled the Super Bowl. 'Donald Trump was on a reality show, a game show, really, and he got to play this villainous, evil, bullying boss that America used to hold up as the example of the American Dream,' she says. 'Well, a lot has changed since those times, you know?' 'He was sold as something he never was. A successful businessman,' she claims. 'This guy was not a successful businessman, by any metric you use to define what a successful businessman is.' Still, Rosie suggests that The Apprentice's success led to people believing in the image of Trump that was being put across on screen, despite, in her view, 'everyone my age, with a brain, on Long Island, knowing what a fool he has been for the whole time he's been alive'. 'Mark Burnett [the creator of The Apprentice, who last year was appointed by Trump as a special envoy to the UK] and all those people who produced The Apprentice, they know what they did,' she adds. 'They created a monster. And they taught him that if you lie enough on television, people will believe it as the truth. 'All the man does is lie! He's a constant, perpetual, obsessive liar. He doesn't understand the difference between reality and his delusion, and that's a very dangerous thing for the leader of the free world.' Turning her attention back to her 'unbelievably wonderful' new life in Ireland, Rosie has 'never had a moment of regret' since she and Clay made the move. 'The people have been so welcoming, and so kind,' she enthuses. 'I love the slower pace of Ireland. And I love the fact that even when it's rainy, and the sky is not blue, it's bright white. That's so much better than New York, where it's an ominous dark grey, and you feel, like, all the depression gathering as the skies get darker. Here, I don't mind it, because the sky is bright. 'When you drive from Dublin to Belfast – as we do, because my cousins are there – and you see those fields, and this endless, beautiful green land, and sheep dotting the landscape, it's like living in a fairytale, in a way.' Thousands of miles from her previous life, Rosie says that Ireland has taken her back to 'my life before I was famous'. 'We bought a beautiful house, and it's in Dublin 4, which makes everybody go, 'ooooh',' she says, alluding to the famous area of the Irish capital. 'But since I've been an adult, it's the smallest house I've lived in – and it's so far my favourite, even though I lived in a big, beautiful, thousands-of-foot home in Miami, on the water, for 20 years. 'There's something beautiful about going back to your essence, and to the simplicity of my life before fame. I know how to do that – I know how to be friends with the cashiers at Tesco. I know how to lurk and live among the people, because I am the people. I never liked any of the pretending not to be, or to have people think that I wasn't. 'All of a sudden, you're transformed into a 'celebrity' person. And, you know, some of us don't feel like we can do that role. I don't know that I'm a good celebrity! I think I'm a good person, I try to use my celebrity for good… even though people say 'you're very negative about Trump'... but people were negative about Hitler, too!' Rosie says that in Ireland, she's recognised only 'maybe every other day, maybe once every three days'. 'And it's never, ever anything like, 'can I have your autograph, can I have a picture?'. It's people saying, 'welcome to Ireland, Rosie. You're welcome here',' she reveals. 'They say, 'lovely to have you, Rosie'. Some people say to me, 'you're smart to get away from that man'. Some people try to buy me a drink because of it. 'There's not a culture of fame in Ireland, like there is in the United States. People don't ask anything of you, they don't expect anything of you, they want to meet you on a person-to-person level, and it's a beautiful quality, and it's a beautiful part of the culture here.' Being away from her home in the US, Rosie says, means she's learning more about herself, which is what inspired Common Knowledge, her upcoming show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The show started out as a stand-up set that Rosie had been working on in LA. Then, she says, she 'left abruptly', at which point it 'no longer felt relevant'. When she and her director began working out the story she wanted to tell after her move to Ireland, she realised that what they had on their hands was 'more of a theatrical show' than a traditional comedy set ('it's not what I normally do… buddum-bum-buddum…' she quips). Instead, Common Knowledge is about 'finding your home, finding your family and finding peace'. 'The show is about losing my mother at the age of 10, and how I mother now, and how great it is to be able to mother this specific child,' she shares. 'I talk about being an adoptive parent, I talk about autism and all its wonder and its grief. And I think it's a beautiful show.' Crucially, she also plans to keep mentions of Trump to a minimum. 'I wanted to do something about why I moved, without dwelling on him, and what happened when my mother died, and we came to Ireland for that summer,' Rosie says. 'I don't go backwards to my early career, or I don't go backwards to, 'oh, he and I had a fight in 2006'. I wanted to start at 63, and introduce myself now, as the 63-year-old woman that I am, not the 30-year-old person who became a public figure'. I love being this age – my mother didn't get to live to 40, so I love 63. 'I don't want to introduce them to, or remind them of, the Rosie that they met all those years ago, because it's 30-something years that I've been doing this. That's a long, long time. This is me now. You know, you can't go back and be who you were then. Nobody should want that.' Rosie O'Donnell makes her Edinburgh Fringe debut with Common Knowledge as part of Gilded Balloon's 40th anniversary celebrations. She will play for 10 shows only between 1 – 10 August 2025. 'What The F**k Has Happened Here?': Carol Vorderman Is Still Asking The Big Questions Jake Shears: 'It Really Feels Like The World Might Need Scissor Sisters Again' Self Esteem: 'I Achieved Everything I Set Out To Do, And I Was Sadder Than Ever'
Fox News
7 hours ago
- Fox News
Federal judge issues temporary restraining order curtailing Trump's immigration enforcement in California
A federal judge in Los Angeles late Friday issued a sweeping temporary restraining order (TRO) against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), ruling that the agency likely violated constitutional protections through its immigration enforcement practices in California. In a 53-page order issued Friday, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, a Biden appointee, barred ICE from conducting detentive stops in the Central District of California unless agents have "reasonable suspicion" that a person is in the country unlawfully. Frimpong's ruling explicitly prohibits ICE from relying solely on race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or English with an accent, location, or type of work when forming suspicion, citing the Fourth Amendment. The order also requires ICE to keep and turn over detailed records of each stop and agents' reasoning for them, develop official guidance for determining "reasonable suspicion," and implement mandatory training for agents. Frimpong presided over a hearing Thursday where she considered granting the request that will have major implications for immigration enforcement in California, a state that has become a focal point in President Donald Trump's aggressive deportation plans. The judge heard arguments about whether to grant the TRO against ICE over allegations the agency is violating constitutional rights during its immigration arrests. Frimpong said during the hearing on Thursday that she was leaning toward granting the TRO Friday. "I think it's important for the court not to burden otherwise lawful law enforcement activities," the judge said. The case was initially brought in June as a routine petition from three detainees, but it has ballooned into a weighty lawsuit challenging the way ICE operates. Immigration rights groups and local governments, including the cities of Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Culver, and West Hollywood, have all intervened in the case and Democrat-led states have filed an amicus brief in support of them. The plaintiffs alleged in court papers that ICE is "indiscriminately" arresting people with "brown skin" at Home Depots, car washes, farms and more. Authorities made the arrests with no "reasonable suspicion" and sometimes mistakenly apprehended U.S. citizens in the process, all in violation of the Fourth Amendment, attorneys wrote. The plaintiffs argued the Trump administration gave ICE an unrealistic quota of 3,000 arrests per day, causing officers to feel pressured to blow past legal requirements to achieve those numbers. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is disputing the allegations and denies wrongdoing. Department of Justice attorneys wrote that immigration arrests, of which there have been nearly 3,000 across California since early June, have been carried out legally. "Their request that immigration authorities be enjoined from relying on certain factors like occupation and location flies in the face of established law requiring immigration officials to consider the totality of the circumstances, including things like occupation and location," the attorneys plaintiffs have also asked the judge to expand visitor access to a short-term detention facility in downtown Los Angeles. The facility became the site of protests and unrest in early June, leading to authorities temporarily abandoning the building. The plaintiffs allege that detainees' access to lawyers has been hindered while in the facility, in violation of the Fifth Amendment. Frimpong's order reinforces their Fifth Amendment claim, requiring ICE to ensure immediate legal access for detainees. The temporary restraining order will remain in effect pending further litigation. The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
New York Times
8 hours ago
- New York Times
Columbia and Trump Near a Deal, With School Possibly Paying Millions
Columbia University and the Trump administration on Friday were nearing a deal in the contentious fight over allegations that the school had failed to protect Jewish students from harassment, with Columbia potentially agreeing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to settle the matter, according to two people familiar with the discussions. The deal, which remains in draft form, would restore at least some of the $400 million in federal research funding the administration canceled. In exchange, Columbia would provide compensation to settle allegations of civil rights violations and increase transparency about admissions and foreign gifts, among other concessions. The existence of a potential deal was confirmed by a third person, who, like the others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive negotiations. The deal could include $200 million or more in compensation paid by Columbia for alleged civil rights violations. Columbia officials are expected to meet with Trump aides next week at the White House to finalize the deal, said one of the people familiar with the discussions. A university spokeswoman on Friday night did not confirm details of the deal or the potential White House meeting. 'The university is focused on advancing the discussions with the federal government. There is no resolution at this time,' the spokeswoman, Virginia Lam Abrams, said. The current draft of the deal, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal and The Free Beacon, does not go as far in exerting federal authority over the university as an earlier version that was circulated in April. That deal would have included a judge-approved consent decree, which is a kind of legally binding performance-improvement plan, according to a copy of that agreement obtained by The New York Times. A consent decree, which would have given the Trump administration significant control over the university for years to come, is not part of the current discussions, the people said. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
