Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary has lambasted Kamala Harris and revealed why he believes she was a ‘faulted, broken’ presidential candidate.
Speaking on a post-mortem roundtable on CNN‘s NewsNight, O’Leary eviscerated Harris for running a poor campaign from the get-go, and laid blame for the Democrats‘ loss on the party as well.
‘The root of this mistake actually came very early on. They didn’t run a [primary] process’, referring to the fact Harris was made the Democrats’ nominee without consulting the party.
He added: ‘They made an excuse to $317million in the kitty. They kept the same campaign manager and said “we will anoint this faulted, broken candidate who was inconsequential in her vice-presidency, lost the 2019 [primary race and was a] complete loser in 2020.’
The Canadian investor also slammed Harris for her inability to communicate and connect with ordinary voters: ‘[Harris] never could articulate anything, had no compassion for people.’
O’Leary added that her media apparatus around her was weak, and didn’t give her a chance to differentiate herself from Joe Biden.
‘She went onto The View, all those women wanted her to win – they threw her a softball. They threw her a second softball.
‘She was so weak as a candidate, she couldn’t even answer that she would do something different [to Joe Biden]. It ricocheted around the world, she was finished.’
Following the release of the election results, O’Leary publicly celebrated Trump’s victory over Harris.
He told Fox News: ‘What’s happened here is the system self-corrected. When you try to break the American model, it fixes itself, and I think people should give credit, within the Democratic party, Donald Trump saved them tonight too.
‘When it gets too crazy, it fixes itself. Whether you love Trump or you hate him, every Democrat owes him a thank you very much, Mr. President!’
Since her loss, Harris has rarely been seen in public, though was recently roasted for crowing how her presidential campaign raised more than $1.4billion through grass roots funds after splashing it on celebrity appearances and an ad on the Las Vegas sphere.
The Vice President boasted in a video message to her supporters that her campaign received a ‘historic $1.4billion, almost $1.5billion’ from grass roots supporters, which Harris said was ‘the most in presidential campaign history’.
‘Nearly eight million donors contributed an average donation of about $56 to fuel our people-powered campaign,’ she added.
But she has been criticised for how her campaign blowing through a billion dollars – with fingers being pointed at the celebrity-filled concert rallies in swing states that took place in the final days of the campaign as well as expensive ad campaigns.
Top Democratic megadonor John Morgan, a wealthy trial lawyer, fumed about the spending spree in an appearance on Chris Cuomo’s show ‘CUOMO’ on NewsNation.
‘All of a sudden, everybody’s got the keys to the candy store, ad buyers, talent consultants. There’s 100 days to do it, and the money started pouring in, pouring in,’ he said.
O’Leary’s criticisms come after the team of Democratic political consultants that ran Kamala Harris‘ losing campaign claimed that the ‘political environment sucked’, leading to Harris’ loss.
‘We were dealing with ferocious headwinds’, said David Plouffe, who ran Obama’s 2008 campaign and then served as a White House advisor.
Plouffe also insisted that Biden was so unpopular when he dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris that it was a difficult task to improve her ratings.
He noted that Harris began the race with approval ratings only in the 33-35 percent range and although they improved her numbers by 15 points, they did not have enough time to sell her to voters.
And Plouffe complained about how difficult it was for Democrats to win support from independents in battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – despite that being the job at hand, and one the team assured Democrats across the country they were capable of doing.
‘It’s really hard for Democrats to win battleground states,’ Plouffe maintained, noting that those states were more conservative than the average blue state and that even the moderates there tended to lean right.
Meanwhile, campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon repeatedly complained about the lack of time they had to make Harris a winner in the 107-day campaign that began in July when Biden finally dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris.
She defended their approach of highlighting how Harris was ‘different’ than both Biden and Trump and a candidate for the ‘future’ instead of trying to differentiate herself from Biden, whose approval rating were epically low.
Campaign advisor Stephanie Cutter confirmed that Harris was ‘unwilling’ to separate herself from Biden.
‘She had a huge deficit in favorability, because either people didn’t know about her or what they did know about her was because of negative media,’ she said.
