During a Wednesday broadcast of WBUR's “Here and Now,” Politico Playbook co-author and White House correspondent Eugene Daniels, who interviewed 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris at an event with the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), said Harris “did not answer” a question about the federal government's response to the resource shortage issues that Springfield, Ohio, faces both before and after the influx of migrants, and instead attacked her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump.
Co-host Deepa Fernandes asked, “You asked Ms. Harris whether some kind of federal response would help the community of Springfield, Ohio, recover. What stood out to you about her response?”
Daniels responded, “I think that's probably what struck me the most, that she didn't answer. I was trying to address an underlying concern that people in Springfield have that has nothing to do with race, which is the question of whether there was a lack of resources available before the new people, the Haitian immigrants, came in, and then when they came in, it was the same situation. For example, there are long lines at the hospital, there are problems in schools because of a lack of interpretation services. So I was trying to gauge whether she believed the federal government was involved. But instead she took the opportunity to talk about the racist conspiracy theories spread by both former President Donald Trump and his running mate.”
Fernandez also said,[S]He dodged a lot of questions about reparations for the descendants of slaves.” Daniels agreed, saying, “Politicians tend to do that.”
At the end of the interview, Daniels said Harris was “pretty good at dodging, as you can see.”
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