Charlamagne tha God held praise and warnings for Vice President Kamala Harris as she wages a media-light campaign against former President Donald Trump.
The maverick radio personality’s rocky relationship with Harris has long been conducted in the public domain. Charlamagne stumped with the vice president on the campaign trail in 2019 but four years later complained to Politico he felt the Biden-Harris administration hadn’t followed through on promises to the black community.
Nonetheless, the prominent radio host threw his weight behind Harris during a new interview with the outlet this week, even as he continued to push her to make crucial changes to her campaign and pressured the Democratic Party to do a better job of listening to African American voters, long considered safe votes for the Left.
While Charlamagne declared it would be “a good thing” if Harris beats Trump this fall, he criticized her for only conducting one media interview since she announced her candidacy.
“She definitely needs to answer questions from black people, you know? We saw her sit down with [CNN’s] Dana Bash last [week] and it was cool. I think it was a little bit overhyped, but it’s because she hasn’t sat down and done a lot of interviews,” he commented.
Harris’s sitdown with the network last week came over a month after she announced she would seek the Democratic nomination to replace President Joe Biden. For weeks before she agreed to the appearance, Harris faced fire for not giving traditional media interviews, a move which she defended by saying she was delivering her message to voters at rallies and events across the country.
The vice president’s defense of her media-light strategy hasn’t convinced Charlamagne. He complained that Trump is outperforming her in media interactions and outreach to the black community.
“One thing that Donald Trump is able to do that I give him a lot of credit for: He talks to so many people,” the radio host admitted. “So what the vice president needs to do is she needs to go out there. Talk to a lot of people and really utilize black media. So when people have these questions about her record and about what it is that she’s done, they can go right there and look it up.”
Charlamagne’s push for Harris to explain her policy positions to voters comes as she gears up for her first debate against Trump next week in Philadephia. Although the vice president has faced criticism for running a campaign relatively light on policy details, in recent days, she has announced positions on fracking and immigration that are more moderate than her progressive stances during her failed 2020 presidential campaign.
The Trump campaign has denounced her policies as “flip flops.” It has also labeled her recently unveiled price-gouging proposal, which is to the left of President Joe Biden’s economic agenda, as “communist.”
“One thing that the vice president seems like she doesn’t like to do is explain herself,” Charlamagne worried ahead of Harris’s debut standoff against Trump on Sept. 10. “She needs to look at it as ‘I’m not explaining this to you, Trump.’ More like ‘I’m setting the record straight,’” the radio personality advised.
While he praised Harris for showing her “true, authentic self” on the campaign trail, he said, “There are a lot [of] black people who feel like we’ve overdelivered for Democrats.”
“And Democrats, historically, they’ve underdelivered for us,” Charlamagne continued as he declared that “Democrats have always been the party of cowards, especially in recent times when it comes to Donald Trump.”
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“I think the Democratic Party as a whole, they really do have to continue to answer to America, but they really have to answer to black voters,” he said.
Charlamagne’s warning to the Harris campaign comes as Trump has gained ground with black voters. The former president captured 18% of African American support nationwide, according to an Economist-YouGov poll released this month. During roughly the same point of his presidential campaign in 2012, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney held 0% of black support nationally.
