After weeks of Republican criticism about Vice President Harris’s media availability, the tables have turned as the Harris campaign accuses former President Trump of avoiding “mainstream” media interviews over the past month.
Trump spoke with a local ABC affiliate in Nevada on Sept. 14. In the 30 days since, he has mostly spoken with conservative columnists, radio hosts and television hosts, and made appearances on friendly podcasts.
But Trump has largely avoided other news organizations, which the Harris campaign sought to spotlight Monday.
“Today marks one month since Donald Trump sat down with mainstream reporters,” Harris campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement. “He pulled out of 60 Minutes. He’s refusing to debate. And he’s refusing to release his medical records. What’s he hiding?”
The former president has appeared several times in the past month on Fox News, speaking with opinion hosts including Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Brian Kilmeade, Greg Gutfeld and Larry Kudlow, who served as a top economic official in the Trump White House.
He spoke with Fox News reporter Bill Melugin in early October about news of the day, and in September with Fox News correspondent Alexis McAdams.
Over the past month, Trump called into Hugh Hewitt’s radio show and spoke with Ben Shapiro, conservative Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen and Breitbart News. Trump also spoke with NewsNation journalist Ali Bradley about immigration and other news of the day in early October.
Trump initially agreed to sit for an interview on CBS News’s “60 Minutes,” as presidential candidates traditionally do. On Oct. 1, six days before the interview would air, CBS News said he’d pulled out. The Trump campaign argued nothing was “ever scheduled or locked in.”
A Trump campaign spokesperson on Monday hit Harris for not holding a press conference since becoming the Democratic nominee and downplayed her recent string of media appearances.
“The fact that she is finally sitting for interviews only demonstrates how desperate her campaign really is,” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “President Trump has conducted hundreds of interviews across different mediums when he isn’t criss-crossing the country doing multiple events a day and will continue to take questions from voters and the media anytime, anyplace, anywhere.”
Trump is scheduled to sit down this week with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait at the Economic Club of Chicago, and he will participate in a Univision town hall Wednesday. He will also attend a town hall in Georgia hosted by Fox News’s Harris Faulkner.
While Trump has mostly kept to conservative media in recent weeks, Harris has gone on something of an interview spree as she seeks to appeal to more voters in a neck and neck campaign.
Harris last week appeared on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, ABC’s “The View,” Howard Stern’s radio show and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” She sat over the weekend with a pair of outlets geared toward Black Americans, and her campaign announced Monday that she agreed to her first interview of the campaign with Fox News.
Fox anchor Bret Baier will interview Harris on Wednesday during a trip to the battleground of Pennsylvania. Harris campaign aides cited the interview as evidence that only one candidate is willing to face tough questions.
“As of today, it has been **one month** since Trump’s been interviewed by a mainstream media outlet, as he has backed out of 60 Minutes and refuses to debate again,” Harris campaign spokesperson Ian Sams posted on the social platform X. “Meanwhile Harris is willing to even go on Fox.”
The Harris campaign has in recent days sought to make Trump’s fitness for office and mental sharpness a bigger issue in the upcoming election.
Harris and her team have blasted Trump for backing out of “60 Minutes,” they have repeatedly pressured the former president to take part in another debate and, after releasing her medical records over the weekend, the vice president questioned why Trump would not do the same.
Polls released in recent days showed Trump closing the gap on Harris nationally, and the two candidates remain locked in a razor-close race in the seven battleground states likely to decide the election.
Updated at 4:18 p.m.