The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) failed to ask Vice President Kamala Harris a single question about criminal justice reform during an on-stage interview on Tuesday.
In 2020, in the wake of the murder of Geroge Floyd, and after protests and riots spread throughout the country, the NABJ called the need for reform “more urgent than ever.”
Moreover, the issue has been central to Harris’s past campaigns — and her record. In her failed 2020 presidential campaign, Harris was confronted onstage by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) over her record as San Francisco district attorney, when she jailed thousands of low-level marijuana offenders — then laughed later when admitting that she, too, had used the drug.
Harris also pursued the parents of truant schoolchildren, a policy that led to parents being harassed — or jailed, in other communities. Harris’s policy disproportionately affected disadvantaged black parents.
Perhaps most notoriously of all, as California Attorney General, Harris kept thousands of non-violent prisoners locked away after the Supreme Court ordered the state to free them. Many of them were black. Harris, arguing for California, actually claimed that the state needed their forced labor to help put out wildfires.
In 2020, Harris gave her support to Black Lives Matter, raising bail funds for rioters in Minneapolis and showing up outside the White House to join so-called “peaceful” protesters, just hours after they had assaulted law enforcement officers and journalists.
There was one question at NABJ about black male voters thinking of voting for former President Donald Trump for economic reasons, but not one about criminal justice reform or Harris’s record as a prosecutor.
An ABC News whistleblower has claimed that the Harris campaign demanded, and ABC granted, a commitment that moderators would not ask her about her tenure as California Attorney General. ABC News denied that it passed any debate questions to the Harris campaign or that it had agreed to fact-check Trump, but not Harris, during the debate.
Trump spoke to the NABJ in July, and was grilled by several hostile questioners. (Harris declined an invitation at that time.)
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.