Republicans are starting to ramp up pressure on Vice President Kamala Harris to appear in more unscripted settings as they seek to end the political honeymoon she’s enjoyed since taking over the Democratic ticket.
Harris’s public presence has increased in the two weeks since she announced her run for president as she attends a series of rallies, fundraisers, and other campaign events. Meanwhile, the White House has given her a more prominent role at official events, including her meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week.
However, in terms of her availability to the press, the Harris campaign has been more cautious. She has so far only engaged in a couple of on-the-record interactions with reporters. Republicans have accused her of “hiding” from public scrutiny.
Harris’s early rollout has energized Democrats following a three-week fight over whether President Joe Biden still had the mental acuity to challenge Donald Trump effectively. Biden ultimately bowed out of the race, endorsing Harris to run against the former president instead.
Republicans are hoping to end what several Democrats are describing as a “sugar high” seen in polling and fundraising once she begins to speak more extemporaneously.
The Harris campaign is keeping the vice president “in the basement because she has a history of word salads and California-lefty buzz words,” according to Republican strategist Brad Todd.
“They know she is at her best when voters can project whatever they want on her candidacy and not have to confront what it actually is,” Todd told the Washington Examiner.
Already, Republicans are mocking her first interactions with the press. Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), said Harris “sounds like a third grader giving a book report on a book she didn’t read” after she and Biden welcomed home U.S. citizens who had been wrongly detained in Russia.
“This is just an extraordinary testament to the importance of having a president who understands the power of diplomacy and understands the strength that rests in understanding the significance of diplomacy and strengthening alliances,” Harris told reporters. “It’s an incredible day. And I got to see it in the families and in their eyes and in their cries.”
Harris has long leaned on her prosecutorial experience as a former San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general to deliver viral moments, from her questioning of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his Senate confirmation hearing in 2018 to her exchange with Biden on bussing during their first Democratic primary debate in 2019, when she was still a Golden State senator.
However, it has been in interviews, such as her sit-down with NBC in 2021 when she was asked why she had not been to the southern border as vice president, and town halls where she has been perceived as her weakest in the past.
“And I haven’t been to Europe,” she told Lester Holt at the time. “I don’t understand the point that you’re making.”
Interviews will be especially significant this election cycle in the absence of a traditional primary process, with the Harris campaign so far relying on statements to disseminate her policy positions.
For now, it is “smart” for the Harris campaign to build up to media appearances, according to David Greenberg, a professor of history, media studies, and journalism at Rutgers University.
“In time, however, she’ll hit some bumps and will probably find a need to do live interviews and, of course, a debate with Trump,” he told the Washington Examiner. “For those, she’ll need to know her own mind on controversial issues that matter to swing voters.”
Despite its strategy since July 21, when Biden announced he was stepping down as the 2024 Democratic nominee, the Harris campaign has underscored how the vice president has participated in 80 interviews this year.
“Since becoming the candidate, Vice President Harris has been blitzing the country, talking directly to voters, and mobilizing a historic coalition that’s ready to win in November,” a Harris campaign spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “Trump is doing none of that. On the rare occasion he addresses people outside his MAGA base, he’s putting his foot in his mouth, turning off the voters he needs to win, and talking about anything but a positive vision for the future — ranting about black jobs, attacking journalists, and promising to pardon insurrectionists.”
Trump has been permitting more access through a call with reporters concerning immigration and by attending this week’s National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago, though he, too, has fumbled with his media appearances.
During his NABJ interview, he falsely accused Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian heritage, of “becoming a black person,” prompting days of outcry and squirming from Republicans.
Nonetheless, Trump has doubled down on the remarks in public and on social media.
Trump has a tendency to play “to his base, whether that is his audience or not,” according to Sandy Maisel, professor emeritus of government at Colby College.
“That is the only possible explanation of his NABJ interview,” Maisel told the Washington Examiner. “His ego does not allow him ever to admit a mistake, so he doubles down and his base loves it. Whether that serves him in the broader electorate seems less certain.”
Greenberg, of Rutgers, agreed that Trump “has good instincts about how to reclaim the spotlight” and that “even his absurd and offensive comments to the black journalists had the effect of winning him attention.”
In response, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt reiterated that Harris is relying on Biden’s so-called basement strategy from 2020 “to hide her weakness and extremist agenda because she knows that opening her mouth will bring her disapproval ratings to a new low.”
“Kamala will keep hiding while the fake news media rewrites history and lets her staffers walk back her radical policies,” Leavitt told the Washington Examiner. “Voters didn’t like dangerously liberal Kamala when she ran in 2020, and after four years of destroying America, they certainly won’t like her this time around.”
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While Brian Rosenwald, a political and media historian at the University of Pennsylvania, would have granted interviews for Harris “to capitalize on the intense interest, as well as to get her message out at a time they didn’t have ads up,” he said he understood why they have not been “a top priority.”
“People forget how massive of an undertaking a presidential campaign is,” Rosenwald told the Washington Examiner. “So to take one over abruptly with this little time before Election Day, I have to assume Harris has been preoccupied with staffing and messaging decisions, maybe filming for ads, overseeing a vice presidential vetting and selection process, etc. … She’s got to take care of the big behind-the-scenes stuff ASAP, because that, more so than any interview, will determine whether she wins or not.”
