Harris tries to talk Muslim interviewer into trying bacon, bans Gaza question: report

Already struggling to win over Arab American and Muslim voters, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris made an Arab-American Muslim interviewer so uncomfortable with her answers that he shelved the recording entirely, according to buried nuggets in a New York Times profile of the social media influencer Monday.

Kareen Rahma's show "Subway Takes," in which the comedian interviews people about their "peculiar personal beliefs" while riding New York transit, has more than 900,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok. The Harris-Walz campaign reached out to Rahma in August to offer interviews with both Harris and second banana Tim Walz, according to the Times.

Harris's staff and the Democratic National Committee rejected Rahma's proposal in three phone calls to ask her about the Gaza-Israel conflict. Instead, her "take" for the show would be "taking a stand against removing one’s shoes on airplanes," the Times reported.

The nominee then threw Rahma a curve during the interview by praising bacon, which is forbidden for Muslims to eat. "Bacon is a spice," Harris said, according to the unpublished video viewed by the Times. (Senior Harris campaign staff claim they brought up bacon before the interview, which Rahma and his manager deny.)

Rahma was noncommittal on the suggestion, so Harris pressed him to consider using cooked bacon like a seasoning in a meal because "it's pure flavor." He told her he doesn't eat pork.

When Rahma tried to redirect back to the shoe question, a staffer advised Harris to fall back on a previously proposed alternative — "declare her love of anchovies on pizza" — and Rahma ended the discussion a minute later by saying "I’m 100 percent unsure on both of those."

The campaign apologized for the bacon take and offered a reshoot but Rahma declined, having already successfully interviewed Walz about the importance of home gutter maintenance. 

"It was so complicated because I’m Muslim and there’s something going on in the world that 100 percent of Muslims care about,” he told the Times. "And then they made it worse by talking about anchovies. Boring!"