Meanwhile, in the EU this was reported by Politico of all places.
‘Invisible’ Kamala Harris struggles to win over Europe
Isabel Schnabel, an executive board member of the European Central Bank, was caught on a hot mic earlier this year criticizing the vice president as “invisible”, and predicting that she would never win. The Democratic Party selection process “is a failure,” Schnabel said in comments reported here for the first time.
“They should have built up another candidate to Kamala Harris from the beginning,” Schnabel said in a private conversation ahead of a panel event in February, apparently unaware her remarks were being live-streamed. “She would never win an election, I mean that's hopeless." Schnabel's next comment was particularly cutting: "I don't even know her because she has been so invisible.”
Two officials who met with Harris at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year told POLITICO she displayed a split-screen persona at the gathering.
On the one hand, her public interventions were highly-scripted — speeches delivered via teleprompter, with little spontaneity, with her 2023 speech at the same conference particularly ill-received as applause-lines bombed and she failed to connect with the audience.
Another example of this is her feather-ruffling appearance at a U.K. artificial intelligence conference in 2023. Harris came on stage late and gave a speech — described to POLITICO as "banal" by one attendee — which poked holes in the flagship conference's theme.