A CNN host is wondering if Vice President Kamala Harris’ strategy of avoiding the press is starting to backfire even as the Democratic nominee has scheduled her first interview with the cable network.
CNN anchor Kasie Hunt centered a panel discussion around that topic Wednesday morning, asking her guests if Harris had waited so long to schedule her first interview that it is now impacting her campaign negatively.
"Did they wait too long to do this? Because this has become – turned into kind of a thing. It has snowballed," Hunt said to the panel after playing clips of Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance hammering Harris over avoiding the press.
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The vice president has not held an unscripted press conference or done a sit-down interview in 38 days, though Harris and her running mate Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., have scheduled a joint CNN interview with Dana Bash that will air on the network Thursday evening.
Still, former Tim Scott presidential campaign senior adviser Matt Gorman told Hunt he believes Harris forgoing interviews since the start of her campaign in late July, after President Biden announced he was exiting the race, has allowed some of the Democratic ticket’s problems to "fester for weeks" because they haven't tried to clear them up in media appearances.
"Look, I am very interested to see what she says on a host of topics, and same with Walz," Gorman said, adding, "And we‘ve talked about some of the things, especially on the Walz and with his military service and circumstances that he‘s talked about that haven‘t matched with the facts – a lot of that has been left to fester for now weeks because it wasn‘t addressed when it first got out there."
The former Scott adviser mentioned that Americans are going to be curious to see how Harris addresses the "flip-flops" she has had on major policy points since her last run for president in the 2020 cycle.
Hunt invited DNC senior adviser Brad Woodhouse to comment on the fact that interviews have "not always been" Harris’ "strongest forum necessarily."
Woodhouse defended Harris, stating, "Well look, she did say she would do an interview by the end of the month, she is doing an interview by the end of the month. And by the way, a joint interview with your vice-presidential pick is pretty standard, pretty standard fare."
He then attacked Vance, saying, "But I just loved those clips of JD Vance and the Republicans just hammering and hammering, hammering that she needs to do an interview. It just shows how desperate they are. And you know what, I want them to do more interviews. And I want Donald Trump to do more interviews."
Hunt pushed back: "Well, they do a lot of interviews."
Woodhouse continued, saying, "Right? And how do they work out for him? Donald Trump did a 64-minute – what was it? – a 64-minute press conference and he lied 162 times. He looked unhinged, he looked off his game."
"So, they should do more interviews and they should do more press conferences," he added about the GOP ticket.
