Vice President Kamala Harris has gone 34 days refusing to offer specifics to voters about her coverage positions, holding no information conferences and sitting for zero main interviews since changing into the Democrats’ presidential nominee.
Harris spoke on Thursday on the Democratic Nationwide Conference (DNC), formally accepting the nomination, and has been busy on the marketing campaign path, however she has didn’t face substantive questions since changing President Biden on the ticket final month.
Now that the celebration’s nationwide conference has wrapped up, hypothesis about when Harris will finish her media blackout is more likely to decide up steam as Individuals need to know the place she stands on quite a lot of hot-button points. Coverage shifts on fracking, border safety and personal medical health insurance are amongst points that she has been urged to clarify in latest weeks.
Throughout considered one of her uncommon and transient press gaggles, Harris insisted on Aug. 9 that she wished “to get an interview scheduled earlier than the tip of the month.” However now, there’s simply over per week till the calendar flips to September and Harris has not introduced any kind of interview.
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Harris laughed and mentioned, “I’m working in direction of it,” on Thursday night time when Fox Information’ Peter Doocy requested if she was prepared for a Fox Information interview following her scripted DNC speech.
Amongst different questions she obtained Thursday night time was “how do you’re feeling tonight?” after her conference acceptance speech. “I really feel good, now onto tomorrow, “Harris mentioned, laughing.
One other NBC reporter requested the way it felt for her to be on the stage.
“It felt good,” Harris mentioned. “, we have 75 days to go … That was good, now we have to maneuver on.”
“You’ll not see one press convention from her within the subsequent 75 days till Election Day,” Fox Information contributor Joe Concha predicted Friday.
In the meantime, her opponent, former President Trump, known as into Fox Information moments after Harris’ DNC speech for an interview; not too long ago sat down with podcaster Theo Von; performed a two-hour chat on X with supporter Elon Musk; and held a pair of press conferences the place he answered questions on all kinds of subjects.
Harris has famously struggled when confronted with powerful questions up to now, usually showing to snort uncomfortably or providing jumbled and complicated solutions.
In 2021, Harris struggled to clarify a technique for securing the border and infamously joked she hadn’t been to Europe, both, when NBC Information anchor Lester Holt requested why she hadn’t visited the southern border.
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In 2023, The New York Occasions reported that she “all however went right into a bunker for a couple of yr, avoiding many interviews out of what aides mentioned was a concern of constructing errors and disappointing Mr. Biden” after the “disastrous” sit-down with Holt.
The Wall Road Journal editorial board on Friday wrote that her DNC speech lacked substance.
“Harris launched herself to the American public on Thursday, and her presentation was very like this week’s Democratic conference: nicely delivered, assured and optimistic, and principally devoid of coverage substance. Whether or not she will be able to hold this up, unexplained and unexposed, for the following 12 weeks will decide whether or not she turns into America’s forty seventh President,” the WSJ editorial board wrote.
The WSJ famous quite a lot of “falsehoods,” peppered all through her scripted speech, together with deceptive assaults on Trump concerning abortion rights, Medicare and Social Safety.
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“Harris tried to put out a imaginative and prescient for her Presidency, but it surely was principally empty platitudes. She is going to present ‘alternative,’ although she didn’t say how. She is going to remedy the housing disaster, with out saying how or explaining why there’s a disaster on her watch. And she is going to scale back costs, with no repeat of her latest proposal to impose value controls,” the WSJ editorial board wrote.
Harris would doubtless be requested how a lot she desires to be linked to the Biden document in a critical interview.
Different subjects she would doubtless have to debate embrace a number of key international coverage points, resembling Israel and Ukraine.
GOP vice-presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, who has urged reporters to “present slightly little bit of self-awareness” and pushed Harris to “do the job of a presidential candidate” by talking to them, has spoken with CNN twice, Fox Information, CBS, ABC and different retailers in latest weeks.
“They gained’t let Kamala do a five-minute interview with Elmo,” pundit David Marcus not too long ago snarked on X.
However some media members appear to marvel if she’s simply using good technique.
CNN’s Erin Burnett identified throughout DNC protection that Harris hadn’t performed an interview, pondering aloud if she ought to “simply ignore all these calls to speak and simply hold doing what she’s doing.”
The Harris marketing campaign didn’t instantly reply when requested if she nonetheless deliberate to take a seat down with a reporter in August.
The marketing campaign informed Fox Information Digital earlier this month that it was conducting a technique to greatest attain voters.
“With below 90 days to go, the Vice President’s prime precedence is incomes the help of the voters who will determine this election,” a spokesperson mentioned. “In a restricted time interval and a fragmented media atmosphere, that requires us being strategic, artistic, and expeditious in getting our message to these voters within the methods which might be most impactful — via paid media, on the bottom organizing, an aggressive marketing campaign schedule, and naturally interviews that attain our goal voters. It’s a far cry from Trump’s dropping, ineffective technique of rage-posting, accosting reporters, and insulting the voters he’ll have to win.
“If Donald Trump is so involved in regards to the success of VP Harris’ marketing campaign blitz, he might, you recognize, get on the market on the marketing campaign path. We’re very happy for him to shed a highlight on his election-losing agenda: terminating the ACA, killing a bipartisan border invoice, and supporting a nationwide abortion ban.”
Fox Information Digital’s Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.