Harris Campaign and MSNBC Involved in Major Ethics Violation Over $500k 'Donation' to Al Sharpton

Over the last couple of weeks, we've learned just how bad Kamala Harris is with money after finding out she blew through over $1.5 billion in less than 15 weeks. Yesterday, we reported that the Harris campaign paid Oprah Winfrey about $2.5 million for her town hall with the vice president. And now we find out that Oprah isn't the only interviewer to whom she paid big money.  

Shortly before sitting down with MSNBC's Al Sharpton, Harris's campaign made a half-a-million-dollar donation to his nonprofit organization the National Action Network, the Washington Free Beacon reported today. The campaign also paid Roland Martin's Nu Vision Media company $350,000 about a month before she appeared as a guest on his streaming program. 

While some of these fees have been dismissed as "production costs" and "advertising," the fact that Harris exchanged any money with Sharpton at all is a major ethics problem for MSNBC. Megyn Kelly has been especially vocal about it, stating that Sharpton and MSNBC did not disclose the donations before what Fox News referred to as a "friendly interview." 

On her SiriusXM show last week, Kelly spoke of the situation during an interview with Bill Ackman, the CEO of Pershing Square: 

“I’m dying from the conflict of interest. I’m dead… The bias is coming out of the ears. This is so irresponsible, unethical, and not allowed. It is so egregious… You cannot make a donation to an anchor’s charity on the side of $500,000 as a presidential candidate, then go sit with the anchor and he didn’t disclose it… This is not a news organization, but they continue to masquerade as one."

She added that MSNBC should fire Sharpton because this is one of the "more egregious breaches of journalistic ethics I have ever seen." 

So far, MSNBC hasn't spoken out on the issue, but with plunging ratings like theirs, maybe it just doesn't care? In the days following this year's election, the left-leaning news network lost around 54% of its viewers. In 2010, however, the network suspended host Joe Scarborough over $4,000 worth of campaign contributions to "friends and family" who were running for office, so it did care at one point, it seems.  

It's no secret that Sharpton and Harris were already chummy with each other. On Oct. 3, a couple of weeks before the interview, he played a video of her wishing him a happy birthday. "Happy birthday, Rev," she said lovingly. "You have been over all of your years such an extraordinary leader. You have been a voice of truth, a voice of conscience." When Sharpton interviewed Harris, he asked softball questions, called her candidacy "historic," and referred to Donald Trump as "hostile."  

The $500,000 donation to Sharpton's National Action Network was part of a "flurry of donations" to the tune of $5.4 million to black and Latino advocacy groups, according to the Free Beacon. Of course, we now know that she did extremely poorly with those groups of voters, so consider it another bad financial decision by Harris. 

And imagine paying people millions of dollars to interview you and coming across so incompetently during those interviews that you become the laughingstock of the nation. Ultimately, I think it all proves that Harris makes poor decisions. Thank goodness she won't be making any more for our country.