How the Harris campaign blew $1 billion in 107 days

Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign spent more than $1 billion in three months, according to a detailed report from the Washington Examiner’s Gabe Kaminsky. FEC records not only show that Kamala paid $1 million to Oprah Winfrey’s production company, but six figures on a building set for her Call Her Daddy podcast, as well as millions on digital consultants and “event production” — also known as her supposed “in” with the celebrity world.

TMZ, true to form, asked Oprah in the street if she had been paid by the Harris-Walz campaign. Oprah said the reports were “not true” and that she was “paid nothing — ever.”  This comes on the heels of the Examiner’s reporting that “there was $1 million for Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions” after Winfrey’s town hall appearance at a Harris rally in September. The Harris campaign paid “Harpo Productions Inc” $500,000 twice on October 15.

“The campaign paid for the production costs of ‘Unite for America,’ a live-streaming event that took place September 19 outside Detroit, Michigan,” a spokesperson for Harpo told Variety. “Oprah Winfrey was at no point during the campaign paid a personal fee, nor did she receive a fee from Harpo.” So according to the billionairess, her production team received $1 million, but she didn’t receive a penny of it?

After spending $1 billion, Kamala’s campaign is reportedly $20 million in debt, according to Politico. The Examiner’s analysis of federal filings found that the Trump-Vance campaign in mid-October spent $526 million less than the Harris campaign. Team Trump spent less on advertising and payroll for staff and consultants.

A Sludge report claimed more “dark money” was involved in Harris’s campaign as super PACs supporting Harris raised at least $195.8 million in comparison to Trump’s $23.2 million from super PACs. “There is no denying it,” Kamala tweeted back in March 2019. “Dark money is fueling our elections and manipulating the election process. We have to get dark money out of politics.” Boy, was she right.

President-elect Donald Trump is still trolling. “​​I am very surprised that the Democrats, who fought a hard and valiant fight in the 2020 Presidential Election, raising a record amount of money, didn’t have lots of $’s left over,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Saturday. “Now they are being squeezed by vendors and others. Whatever we can do to help them during this difficult period, I would strongly recommend we, as a Party and for the sake of desperately needed UNITY, do. We have a lot of money left over in that our biggest asset in the campaign was ‘Earned Media,’ and that doesn’t cost very much. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Harris, it should be stressed, failed to win any of the seven crucial swing states after shelling out these eye-watering sums. With such a stark disparity between costs and results, and so little accountability, Cockburn has to ask: when are they next hiring?