Presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., on Wednesday ripped the media coverage of her shopping for a multicolored, sequined jacket while stumping last week in South Carolina.
But while the campaign stop did draw scrutiny, most of the negative press was generated by the apparent coziness between Harris and some of the roving reporters who followed her on her tour of Columbia small businesses.
“So I’m in this store, and I’m hearing her story, and I want to buy something, and so then I look at this multicolored, sequined jacket. And I’m thinking this would be really great for Pride Parade, right?” Harris told Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” of her trip to Styled by Naida, a nonprofit organization founded by a formerly homeless woman.
“And I get home, and my husband’s like, because he wasn’t with me, he’s like, ‘So there’s this jacket that apparently you tried on and it’s now got its own life,'” Harris said. “And apparently it became the subject of all this controversy by journalists around should she be doing something like shopping if she’s running for president, and then all this other… And just ridiculous, right?”
Commentators such as Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume said the social media posts correspondents shared of the stop were “just embarrassing.”
“So now journalists are going shopping with Harris, helping pick out clothes and then putting out glowing tweets about it,” Hume wrote.
Daily Mail U.S. political editor David Martosko tweeted: “If this is what the 2020 campaign is going to be like, President Trump’s complaints about the media could have even more staying power with his base than the last time around.”
The New York Times’ Jonathan Martin, however, interpreted the encounter differently.
“I took it as a hopeful sign that her handlers aren’t shielding her and are offering the sort of access recent pres campaigns (R and D) have not,” Martin wrote.
