Vice President Kamala Harris has gone 48 days as the presumptive, and now, official Democratic nominee for president without holding an official press conference.
Under pressure to sit down for a substantive interview after weeks of stonewalling, Harris finally ended her interview drought last week when she was joined by running mate Tim Walz for a pre-taped piece with CNN’s Dana Bash last Thursday in Georgia that was a far cry from a traditional press conference.
“She should absolutely hold regular press conferences. Americans have the right and need to know what her policy stances are,” conservative influencer Tim Young told Fox News Digital.
“Anyone who wants to lead the free world should be able to handle questions from the press,” Young continued. “If Kamala can’t handle real questions from the press, she absolutely can’t handle negotiations with foreign leaders.”
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Vice President Kamala Harris in her first sit-down interview with the media since rising to the top of the Democratic ticket. (CNN)
During the CNN interview, Harris defended some of her noted policy flip-flops on issues like fracking and immigration, saying her “values” hadn’t changed. She was also pressed on whether she had regrets about defending President Biden’s mental acuity after his debate, given he dropped out of the race less than a month later. She also said she wanted to “turn the page on the last decade of what I believe has been contrary to where the spirit of our country really lies.”
Bash pointed out Harris had been vice president for three-and-a-half of those years, but Harris countered she meant moving on from this “era,” seemingly referring to the political rise of Donald Trump that began in 2015.
Harris also sat for two radio interviews this week that aired on Friday.
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As to when she’ll actually do a formal press conference, that day may never come, at least while she’s still a candidate.
“You will not see one press conference from her in the next 75 days until Election Day,” Fox News contributor Joe Concha predicted earlier this month.
Conservative Radio Libre host Jorge Bonilla feels Harris should do a press conference but said it’s almost “irrelevant” because she continues to get a pass.
“She is highly unlikely to do a press conference because the media have enabled and encouraged her ‘plexiglass basement’ strategy, wherein she preserves the illusion of being out there while remaining wholly inaccessible to the press and therefore unaccountable,” Bonilla told Fox News Digital.
NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck feels the vice president “obviously owes it to the American people to hold free-wheeling press conferences where reporters can, unlike what happened [Thursday] with CNN’s Dana Bash, ask follow-up questions.”
“For every softball from, say, ABC or NPR, you’ll hope a liberal journalist will show some courage to do the right thing,” Houck told Fox News Digital.
“The interview itself had a positive atmosphere. From the get-go in the hype video-like opening by Bash, CNN put forward a perception that this was an event, not a grinding fact-finding mission,” Houck continued. “She missed a litany of topics with Harris. Allowing death row inmates to vote, closing ICE, defunding the police, ending private insurance, girl’s sports, the filibuster, Jussie Smollett, the Minneapolis bail fund, systemic racism… those were just a few of the areas she could have touched on.”
Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz in CNN interview.
Former President Trump has sought to highlight the contrast in media availability between the two, sitting for several lengthy interviews in recent weeks and also holding a pair of press conferences.
Harris received mixed reviews for her showing with Bash, where she took the majority of the questions but nevertheless had Walz there for support.
One point that received praise from liberals was her pointed dismissal of a question about Trump’s suggestion that she didn’t embrace being Black until adulthood. Calling attacks around race from Trump a tired “playbook,” she told Bash to move on to the next question.
But conservative CNN commentator Scott Jennings said the Trump campaign should be “salivating” over one of the revelations from the interview, which appeared to be her embrace of so-called “Bidenomics.”
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Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris talks as she visits SandFly Bar-B-Q in Savannah, Ga., Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
By doing the interview, Harris met the bar she set three weeks ago that she wanted to schedule one by the end of the month. Whether pressure will grow for her to do more, and also her first solo interview as a candidate, remains to be seen.
“My fear is, because Bash wasn’t like, say, CBS’s Steve Kroft or NPR’s Steve Inskeep salivating at the sight of Barack Obama, the liberal media will claim this and the upcoming ABC debate are sufficient interview time for the campaign,” Houck said.
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Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.
