Kamala Harris' bungled answer on 'The View' about Biden seen as turning point in campaign

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Kamala Harris admits there's 'not a thing' she'd do differently than Biden on 'The View'

The 'Outnumbered' panel discussed Kamala Harris' struggle to define how her policies will differ from President Joe Biden's during her appearances on 'The View' and 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.'

Vice President Kamala Harris did not go to "The View" expecting a tough interrogation when she sat down with the ABC talk show on Oct. 8.

But her answer to a softball question is now widely viewed as a turning point in a campaign that ended in her lopsided defeat at the hands of President-elect Donald Trump.

Co-host Sunny Hostin asked Harris, "If anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?" Harris paused for a moment and then said, "There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of — and I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact."

Hostin had given Harris a clear opportunity to differentiate herself from Biden, who dropped out of the race in July due to intense party pressure and grim polls. But Harris instead effectively cut an ad for Trump's campaign that allowed it to tie her directly to an unpopular administration.

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Kamala Harris couldn't think of something she'd do differently from Joe Biden's first term when asked on "The View" on Oct. 8, 2024. (The View / ABC)

In a New York Times report about how Trump won the race, this moment was seen as significant because the Trump campaign's internal polling showed Harris had, until that point, effectively pitched herself as a change agent to voters.

The Times reported Trump advisers "rejoiced" and were shocked Harris didn't have an answer ready for such an obvious question. The clip soon found its way into national advertisements.

"By that afternoon, up to 10 million voters received text messages containing the clip on their cellphones. Television ads broadcast it to tens of millions more over the following weeks," the Times reported.

Facing the headwinds of Biden's unpopularity, widespread economic anxiety and a multicultural voting coalition built by Trump, Harris went down to defeat on Tuesday, and many of her supporters are blaming Biden. If numbers stand, Harris will be the first Democrat to lose the national popular vote in 20 years and only the second since 1988.

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Hostin certainly didn't want to hurt Harris. She predicted the Democrat would win the race in a "blowout" and confidently said that Puerto Ricans would take out "trash" like Trump last week after an insult comic's joke about the island at Trump's Madison Square Garden rally. 

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Supporters react as U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris concedes the election during a speech at Howard University on November 06, 2024 in Washington, DC.  (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

The rest of the left-leaning show's hosts openly supported Harris in the race as well. Co-host Whoopi Goldberg even introduced Harris as "the next President of the United States" on the day of her interview.

But Hostin's innocent query helped derail Harris, and numerous media reports are highlighting it in their postmortems about Harris' bruising defeat.

The "View" anecdote leads a CNN story headlined, "Where Harris' campaign went wrong," as well as BBC's "Why Kamala Harris lost: A flawed candidate or doomed campaign?" and USA Today's, "How Kamala Harris lost the election: The fatal flaws in a doomed election bid."

"Kamala Harris Lost Her Way After ‘The View’ Interview Left Her Campaign Stranded With Joe Biden," a Variety headline on Wednesday blares. Mediaite included it in its list of the five moments that made Trump president again.

Vice President Kamala Harris gestures as she delivers a concession speech for the 2024 presidential election, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, on the campus of Howard University in Washington. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough) ((AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

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"Americans were ready for a change, and Harris kept telling them that she represented one on the stump. But the hollowness of that promise was laid bare when, in a moment of weakness, she admitted that she couldn’t identify a single substantive difference between herself and her boss," Mediaite wrote.

Hostin was one of several hosts of the show fuming at Tuesday's results this week. On Wednesday, she said Trump's victory was due to "cultural resentment" in the country and called herself "profoundly disturbed" at the results.

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On Thursday, she snapped that Latinos in Texas supporting Trump were sexists and misogynists.