Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential nominee, hopes to sit down by the end of August for her first interview since launching her presidential campaign, she told reporters Thursday.
“I’ve talked to my team. I want us to get an interview scheduled before the end of the month,” Harris said on the tarmac in Michigan. That timing could place her first interview after the August 19–22 Democratic National Convention.
Harris has not done any sit-down interviews or press conferences since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and she became the presumptive Democratic nominee last month.
Instead, she has spoken to reporters off the record, and spokespeople have issued statements backtracking from the progressive policy stances she staked out during her failed presidential campaign four years ago. The mainstream media continues to provide Harris with overwhelmingly positive coverage as she experiences a jump in the polls against Trump and shatters fundraising records thanks to newfound Democratic enthusiasm.
Contrasting Harris, former president Donald Trump, her 2024 GOP rival, held a press conference Thursday afternoon and criticized Harris for ducking press scrutiny.
“She hasn’t done an interview,” Trump said from Mar-a-Lago. “She can’t do an interview. She’s barely competent.”
Senator J. D. Vance (R., Ohio), Trump’s running mate, pointed out Harris’s lack of press engagement Wednesday after the two landed on the same tarmac in Wisconsin during respective campaign trips.
“I figured you guys might be lonely because Kamala doesn’t take questions,” Vance told reporters after attempting to approach Harris.
Trump proposed three presidential debates for next month, one each on Fox News, ABC News, and NBC News, to counteract her lack of unscripted press interactions. Harris welcomed Trump’s invite to hold the ABC News debate but did not address his requests for two more debates.
“I am happy to have that conversation about an additional debate, or after September 10, for sure,” Harris said, referring to the ABC debate. A Harris campaign official told ABC News that she will not be agreeing to Fox News’s proposed September 4 debate, and that future debates depend on whether Trump shows up to the ABC News contest on September 10. It is unclear if she would agree to the proposed NBC debate on September 25.
Trump previously suggested that he would not show up to the ABC debate after Biden dropped out, as Harris taunted him about the two facing off.
The debate will be closely watched, given how Biden’s disastrous debate performance in June triggered his eventual decision to bow out of the presidential race after a weeks-long Democratic revolt.