Kamala Harris, In Rachel Maddow Interview, Hails Jimmy Kimmel’s Return

Kamala Harris, in her first news interview since leaving office, hailed ABC’s decision to return Jimmy Kimmel to the air.

Harris told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, “Talk about the power being with the people and the people making that clear with their checkbooks as it relates to the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel. We saw the power of the people over the last few days, and it spoke volumes, it moved a decision in the right direction.”

Harris last week called out companies for caving to the Trump administration.

She wrote on social media, “What we are witnessing is an outright abuse of power,” Harris posted. “This administration is attacking critics and using fear as a weapon to silence anyone who would speak out. Media corporations — from television networks to newspapers — are capitulating to these threats. We cannot dare to be silent or complacent in the face of this frontal assault on free speech.”

Harris sat down with Maddow in studio as the kickoff for her book tour for 107 Days, her account of her truncated presidential campaign last year.

In the interview, Maddow called Harris the “patron saint of ‘I told you so, in terms of people understanding the warnings and predictions about what Trump would be like.” Maddow noted that Harris wrote in the book, “I predicted all of that. I warned of it. What I didn’t predict is the capitulation, the billionaires lining up to grovel, the big media companies, universities, so many major law firms.”

Harris told Maddow, “I always believed that is push came to shove, these titans of industry would be guardrails for our democracy, for the importance of sustaining democratic institutions. And one by one by one, they have been silent. They have been — I use the word feckless. It’s not like they’re going to lose their yacht or their house in the Hamptons.”

The Walt Disney Co. announced earlier that Kimmel would return to the schedule on Tuesday. The network said last week that it was pulling his late-night show indefinitely, amid the furor over a remark he made about MAGA’s effort to define the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s assassination. The network’s announcement came after a warning from the chairman of the FCC, Brendan Carr, and a statement from station group Nexstar, which said that it was pulling the show from its ABC affiliates.

Harris referred to Donald Trump as a “tyrant,” and talked not only about the administration’s pressure on Disney over Kimmel, but the president’s efforts to install loyalists as U.S. attorneys to prosecute his opponents.

“Perhaps it is because they want to please him and nominate him for a Nobel Prize,” Harris said of corporate leaders. “Perhaps it’s because they want a merger approved, or they want to avoid an investigation, but at some point they’ve got to stand up for the sake of the people who rely on all of these institutions to have integrity, and to at some point be the guardrails against a tyrant who is using the federal government to execute his whim and fancy because of a fragile ego.”

Harris’ book already has generated headlines for what she wrote about Joe Biden‘s decision to run for reelection and stay in the presidential race until July, 2024. In an excerpt that ran in The Atlantic earlier the month, Harris wrote, “‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision.”

On Maddow’s show, Harris said, “I realized that I have and had a certain responsibility that I should have followed through on. And so when I talk about the recklessness, as much as anything I am talking about myself. There was so much, as we know, at stake. As I write, where my head was at the time is that … it would come off as completely self serving.”

Maddow asked whether she meant telling Biden that it was not a good idea for him to run again.

“Or even if he should question if it is a good idea,” Harris said.

Maddow also asked Harris if she would consider running in 2028, but she didn’t give away much in terms of her future plans.

“That’s not my focus right now. That’s not my focus, at all,” Harris said. “It really isn’t.”