Conservative commentator Michael Medved says he’ll likely vote for VP Harris

Nationally recognized conservative commentator Michael Medved says he will likely vote for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in November.

Appearing on The Gee & Ursula Show on KIRO Newsradio, Medved said, when asked if he would vote for Harris, “I’m sort of reluctant to say it, but it’s obvious that that unless something comes out in the campaign that is very different from what was presented last night, I think that’s the right decision.”

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Medved said that although the Democratic National Convention (DNC) wasn’t perfect, it was a home run.

“I think this was an epically well-arranged, well-presented convention because part of what they’re doing is trying to identify as the party of joy, the party of positivity,” Medved explained. “One of the things that the Democrats did at their convention was they recaptured the flag. I can’t think of any democratic event that has been so nakedly patriotic, with one person after another coming up and talking about how I love this country, how this is the greatest country in the world.”

When pressed, Medved identified a shortcoming of the event. “They had a number of people who came up there as victims, particularly last night, they had people who had lost children or husbands or gun violence, tragically been shot at and politicized that,” he noted. “And it’s lousy when Republicans do it, it’s lousy when Democrats do it. It’s lousy taking people’s private grief and trying to simplify complicated political issues by showing that private grief. I think they should have left that alone.”

Medved criticizes Trump policies

Host Gee Scott asked Medved to give him two or three policies of Donald Trump that he was most excited about.

“I’m excited in the other way, I dread them. And the one that comes to mind immediately is this idea of a tariff, a tariff of 10% on everything,” Medved explained. “He’s now said he wants to put a tariff of 60% on Chinese goods. And this is not money that the company or the other country is supposed to pay. It’s money that is going to be saddled for American consumers. That’s who pays for these tariffs.”

Medved also does not agree with Trump’s appraoch to NATO. “For President Trump to say that he doesn’t care, let’s let Vladimir Putin do anything the hell he wants to NATO allies is outrageous.”

Host Ursula Reutin asked, “But what do you say to people who say, You know what? My bank account was better under Trump. That’s why I’m going to vote for him.”

“The one thing about your individual bank account that may have been true, but the question is the direction that we’re going now and the direction we go in the future,” Medved said. “This is an area where both candidates are lacking. Neither Trump nor Harris has talked meaningfully about doing something about the national debt and about the unbalanced budget, but at least on the Harris side, you have the idea that you’re not going to immediately do an across the board major tax cut.”

Harris spoke about a tax cut for 100 million people, which refers to the people who are already paying taxes. Medved said, “There are a lot of Americans who don’t pay taxes because they don’t earn enough to pay federal income taxes. And again, that’s very different from President Trump, talking about increasing taxes on everybody, which is what a tariff would do.”

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Medved explained there’s no question the DNC has effected local politics. In the governor’s race, “It helps Bob Ferguson (in his race against Dave Reichert for Washington governor.) People still do find that party identification to be motivating factor. And right now, after these two conventions and talking about the mood at the Republican Convention and the joyous the infectiously positive and optimistic mood of the Democratic Convention, I think for people who are caught in the middle and unable to decide, this is probably a big push that helps Democrats.”

Bill Kaczaraba is a content editor at MyNorthwest. You can read his stories here. Follow Bill on X, formerly known as Twitter, here and email him here.