When it was all said and done, Kamala Harris blew through between $1.5 and $2 billion to get people to like her well enough to vote for her. What Kamala got in return, however, was a reputation for being one of the biggest spendthrifts in presidential campaign history. However, the saddest part about her campaign was that she had to pay people to be nice to her. And my, oh, my, the price of nice is spendy. All told, Kamala, now on the beach in Hawaii, burned through $100,000,000.00 a week in her attempt to buy the presidency.
One hundred million dollars a week for fifteen weeks. And that's the low estimate.
When I was a kid, a mom down the street would call our house, looking for someone — my sisters or me — to play with her kid. I dreaded those phone calls.
Play sessions were a struggle because the two of us had little in common. We were around the same age and she was a nice enough girl, but she was a hot house flower. A bubble child. Very protected. She couldn't engage in rough-and-tumble play outside. No jump rope. No kickball. I never knew why. We couldn't go to the park across the street because that wasn't compatible with her skillset for some reason. We'd stay inside with her cat and play with her dolls, and she'd tell me about her adventures traveling the world.
I couldn't always comprehend what she was trying to say, either. Every word meshed together with the next and she kept repeating herself, so it got tedious and frustrating. I'd dream of doing something else — often hoping we'd get a cookie that we seldom had around our house. It never happened that I can remember.
It turns out, Kamala's that hot house flower. And she had to hand out a lot of cookies to get people to play with her. Kamala could have gone to the playground and jump-roped with the other, tougher kids there but everyone, especially her team, knew that wasn't her skillset. Indeed, there was a likelihood that Kamala would step on a verbal landmine, reveal her real, radical thoughts on the issues, and blow up her campaign.
So she paid people. They pretended to be doing journalism and she pretended to be surprised by their questions.
Columnist and former CNN contributor Roland Martin sold his media company's interview to Kamala for $350,000.
So they are really getting desperate going to Roland and the Shade Room those crowds are already K Hive folks so not sure how this will help because you need Alpha men and talking to a super Beta male like Roland Martin 🤷🏾♂️,
— BeatZillaPDX #NewBlackMedia #B1 #FBA (@BeatZillaPDX) October 14, 2024
Kamala Harris was selected 😒 pic.twitter.com/22IORoFk4n
Martin grumbled, "It should have been a hell of a lot more. More should have been spent on Black-owned media."
Check your privilege, Roland.
He called the business deal "advertising."
People in the media, such as MSNBC's Al Sharpton, pimped himself out to do an interview with Kamala that appeared to correspond with her two $250,000 donations to the National Action Network in September and October, for a total of $500,000.
He aired part of the interview on his MSNBC political show and never mentioned that he got paid for doing it.
Chuck Ross at the Washington Free Beacon, which broke the original pay-for-play story, reported that the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) took a dim view of Sharpton's interview.
"This kind of entanglement harms the credibility of the journalist, the news organization, and journalism overall, and credibility is difficult to restore," the organization told Ross. "While Sharpton may not consider himself a journalist, many viewers do."
Mr. Resist We Much may have some 'splainin' to do — as soon as he cashes his checks.
If you're Kamala Harris and people are worried you might be too progressive, it's probably not wise to go on MSNBC with Al Sharpton and let him put words in your mouth that you are, in fact, super progressive and soft on crime. pic.twitter.com/LzRo19l76A
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) October 21, 2024
SPJ told Ross in a statement that Sharpton's conflict of interest "is part of a troubling trend among network news anchors who inform the public while engaging in unethical behavior" that "builds distrust among their audiences and places a black eye on both their network and the profession."
This financier thinks there might be a Federal Elections Commission concern about these "donations."
How did the Harris-Walz campaign burn through $1 billion dollars in 4 months? Kamala Harris campaign gave $500,000 to Al Sharpton's "non-profit" and weeks later, the "Rev" Al gave a glowing interview to Harris. This smells like 🐂💩and should trigger an investigation by the FEC-… pic.twitter.com/3zVNrzgUl3
— Ron Milner (@RonMilnerBoodle) November 13, 2024
Oprah, who is more entertainer than journalist, is one of several stars who got paid to put on a show for Kamala. Oprah had to bring an entire production crew to the swing state of Michigan with a live (paid?) audience and a bunch of Zoomed-in Hollywood types for an interview with Kamala for the cool sum of $2.5 million. Hugs all around.
Oprah swears she wasn't paid. TMZ asked her. "Not true,” she said. “I was paid nothing, ever.” Her company was paid, however, because Oprah's technical crews don't work for free. She didn't receive a personal fee.
Journalists were willing to trim their sails, ask prescribed questions, and sell their prestige, their airwaves, podcasts, or live streams, for a pretend playdate with Kamala. She even used other peoples' money to build a special playground in Washington, D.C., for one podcaster that cost tens of thousands of dollars.
When I was coming up as a reporter, we couldn't accept anything of value costing more than $15. Someone could give you coffee, a scoop of avocado ice cream (real), or popcorn. One time, someone gave me a piece of poetry to help with a story I was doing about Christmas, if you can believe it. It had a $17 price tag on it. To my shame, I took it, though I never allowed myself the ability to enjoy it. I still have it in a box, a memory of this blessed poem and a memory of my shame for breaking the rules.
Another rule at the shop was, "We don't pay for news." In short, don't nobody get nuthin' for giving you a scoop.
I'm not saying that entertainers shouldn't get paid for doing a job. Far from it. But you've got to know your place, Rev. Al and Roland. If I were a more influential podcaster, maybe someone would want to pay me, but that simply has not been a problem (lulz).
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Journalism's reputation is in the toilet right now. The only way out is to do good journalism and market the hell out of it.
In the last ten years, a political insider called me and asked me if I'd write about their pet project for a publication I wrote for. I'd get paid as part of a grant and everything. But it was someone else's publication, and I told them I couldn't because it sounded like pay-for-play. That's unethical, I said.
When conservative journalism as a viable source of income went into free fall because of the governmental and leftist Censorship Industrial Complex, I thought about that offer for a fleeting minute or two. I sure could use the money, I thought.
I would have done an interview with Kamala, and it wouldn't have cost her a cent. But would she have been willing to pay the price?
