It’s been more than two weeks since Vice President Kamala Harris was nominated as the Democratic nominee. And in that time, she hasn’t given a single interview or held a press conference, setting a new precedent for candidates’ access to the press in an unprecedented election cycle.
Harris has had something of a honeymoon. The mainstream media has showered her candidacy with glowing coverage, immediately comparing Barack Obama’s political rise to recasting his word salads as royal memes. She has tightened the polls against former President Trump. And the honeymoon will likely continue with the selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate and the upcoming DNC convention, where candidates traditionally receive a boost in the polls.
Perhaps most importantly, she has avoided scrutiny.
The opposite happened with his former running mate, President Biden, particularly in the days leading up to his withdrawal from the race. After his disastrous debate performance, the mainstream media began scrutinizing the White House over Biden’s health, his poll numbers took a hit, and Democrats launched an intense and unprecedented pressure campaign to remove him from office.
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Vice President Kamala Harris has not given an interview in more than two weeks since launching her presidential campaign. (ALLISON JOYCE/AFP via Getty Images)
Surprisingly, Biden was quicker to grant an interview in a terrible news cycle than Harris was in the much more favorable news cycle she is currently experiencing, speaking with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos eight days after his tenuous debate that muddied the 2024 race. Subsequent interviews and rallies failed to repair the damage, and he dropped out of the race on July 21.
Even Harris has been much more accessible to the media in the aftermath of the Biden debate, making appearances on MSNBC, CNN and ABC to promote the “bad night” narrative.
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Both Harris and Trump have been on the campaign trail during their renewed showdown, but only Trump has given interviews, including at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual conference in Chicago, where he clashed with panelists. Harris did not attend.
Instead, the media has heard from a plethora of high-profile Harris supporters. One of her top spokespeople, Transportation Secretary and former vice presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, has given at least 10 interviews touting her candidacy and attacking the Trump-Vance duo in the two weeks since Harris was named the presumptive nominee.
Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, who hopes to become the next vice president himself, specifically denounced Harris’ “baseline strategy” on Tuesday and urged reporters to hold her more accountable.
“This is someone who has been a Democratic candidate for 16 days. She hasn’t answered a single real question from a reporter,” he said. “The American people deserve to know the people who want to lead them, and I think it’s a disgrace to Kamala Harris, but increasingly to the media, that she’s taking a basement strategy of running away from reporters instead of getting in front of them and answering the tough questions about her record and letting the American people know who she is.”
President Biden sat down for an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos eight days after his disastrous debate performance rocked the political landscape, while Vice President Harris has avoided the media despite the favorable news cycle. (Photo by ABC via Getty Images)
Why take the risk?
In the 17 days since she launched her campaign, Harris has not faced questions about her knowledge of Biden’s mental decline, how she would handle the ongoing escalation in the Middle East, growing concerns about a recession, her record as “border czar,” the revelations surrounding second gentleman Doug Emhoff’s extramarital affair during her first marriage, and the myriad far-left positions she espoused during her 2020 presidential bid, several of which her campaign has quietly attempted to address with reversal statements to the press.
“As long as she’s getting such favorable media coverage, there’s no reason for her to take risks by engaging in impromptu press exchanges,” Jeffrey McCall, a journalism professor at DePauw University, told Fox News Digital. “Harris has shown repeatedly throughout her political career that she’s not very good at expressing herself in impromptu situations. She’s known for her word salads and her unserious style.”
“After all, Biden ran an irresponsible campaign in 2020, the media followed him and he was elected,” he added.
Perhaps her team concluded that the risk of doing interviews was too high. Many point to her damning exchange with NBC’s Lester Holt in 2021, when she said, “And I haven’t been to Europe,” when pressed not to travel to the southern border after being nominated by Biden to address the root causes of the migrant crisis.
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Harris was widely criticized for her comments rejecting calls for her to go to the border during a June 2021 interview with NBC’s Lester Holt. (Screenshot/NBC News)
Last week, she raised eyebrows when she spoke on the tarmac after the emotional return of Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva, three Americans freed from Russia in a historic prisoner swap.
“It’s an extraordinary testament to the importance of having a president who understands the power of diplomacy and who understands the strength that lies in understanding the importance of diplomacy and strengthening alliances,” Harris said in the unplanned moment.
‘Do better’
Calls from the media asking Harris to answer questions are rare.
The New York Times editorial board urged Harris to “do better” than Biden in her interactions with reporters, something Biden has rarely done compared to his predecessors.
“President Biden has rarely granted the media permission to ask questions on behalf of the American people, and on the rare occasions when he has, his team has sometimes sent out prepared questions. As a result, he was ill-prepared for the campaign and for facing his opponent. Mr. Trump, too, rarely takes questions. Ms. Harris has the opportunity to do better,” the Times editorial board wrote last month.
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But beyond the New York Times’ lukewarm plea, the media has barely asked Harris to speak to reporters. Stephen L. Miller, host of the podcast Versus Media, suspects that’s because no journalist “wants to be seen by their colleagues” as ultimately helping Trump win the election by creating the media event where Harris wobbles under pressure.
“This is their atonement for what they see as mistakes made in 2016 with Hillary Clinton and her emails,” Miller told Fox News Digital.
The New York Times editorial board urged Harris to “do better” than Biden when it comes to answering reporters’ questions. (Getty Images)
On Tuesday, Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer suggested that other media outlets should cover Harris’ refusal to answer questions.
“We can’t be the only media company talking about this,” Hemmer said on “America’s Newsroom.”
“It’s been 16 days since she’s had a meaningful interview,” Hemmer continued. “I mean, is it possible that she could run the clock all the way to Chicago? That would be extraordinary. And then you have to ask yourself, ‘What are you hiding? And what is your team hiding from?’”
However, not everyone thinks Harris needs to give interviews. At least not yet.
“Voters want to choose a winner, and Kamala Harris looks more like a winner when she draws thousands of people to a rally than when she gives an interview to Lester Holt,” said Democratic strategist Christopher Hale.
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Hale, who spearheads “Catholics for Kamala,” told Fox News Digital that she has not faced any political obstacles preventing her from avoiding interviews, noting her growing popularity since launching her campaign.
“The only way it could hurt her is if the press started writing about her not giving interviews. The public would have to become aware that she’s avoiding the table,” Hale said. “What she’s doing right now is working, so I’ll keep doing it until it doesn’t work anymore.”
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
