Harris seeks to clear interview hurdle with wingman Walz

Vice President Harris will try to clear a hurdle in her presidential campaign Thursday when she and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), sit for an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.

It’s a crucial moment for the Democratic nominee for president, who has come under repeated criticism from Republicans for not doing an interview where she might be asked tough questions.

Harris has done no solo interviews since replacing President Biden as the likely Democratic nominee for president in July. She was coronated as the Democratic nominee at last week’s party convention.

Harris is likely to be asked tough questions by Bash, a veteran reporter who hosts “Inside Politics” and is a co-host of “State of the Union.” Bash also co-hosted the June debate between Biden and former President Trump.

Walz, Harris’s vice presidential candidate, will be at her side, which could help the presidential nominee in various ways.

Since becoming the Democratic nominee, Harris has only briefly answered questions from reporters traveling with her. She told reporters last month that she would schedule a full interview by the end of August.

Republicans have been pressing for Harris to take tougher questions from the media in the hope that this could change the direction of the presidential race.

Since Harris entered the battle, former President Trump’s healthy lead over then-presumptive Democratic nominee President Biden has all but disappeared.

The Decision Desk HQ/The Hill updated analysis of the presidential race released Monday found Harris has a 55 percent chance of defeating Trump, a sharp turn up from Biden’s 44 percent chance of winning when he left the race and endorsed Harris on July 21.

Harris has also tilted the battles for the House and Senate toward Democrats, though the Decision Desk HQ/The Hill analysis shows the GOP as the favorites to win majorities in each chamber.

Republicans reacting to Tuesday’s news that Harris would hold a major interview — but with a wingman in Walz — offered scorn for that decision.

“Kamala is clearly scared to do an interview on her own and it’s pre-taped so they can clean it up,” the Trump campaign said Wednesday in a post on the social platform X.

Republicans unfriendly with Trump also offered some criticism.

“I don’t know if Democrats fully realize how damaging the image of the possible first woman president being incapable of giving an interview alone without the presence of a man to help her is,” said Meghan McCain, the daughter of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). McCain is a frequent critic of Trump.

Republicans have been happy to point out that Trump did take tough questions from journalists when he took the stage at the National Association of Black Journalists in late July, shortly after Harris took over for Biden.

That appearance did show Trump was willing to walk into the fire of tough questioning, though the event seemed damaging to the former president. Trump courted controversy by mocking Harris’s racial background.

Democrats, responding to criticism of the Harris-Walz joint interview, noted Trump and Sen. JD Vance (Ohio), the GOP vice presidential candidate, did a joint interview with Fox News’s Jesse Watters, who is very friendly to the former president, after the Republican National Convention. 

Harris’s rocky interview with NBC’s Lester Holt in 2021 has been repeatedly raised as the weeks have gone by without a major interview by the Democratic nominee.

Holt pressed the vice president about why she hadn’t visited the border after Biden tasked her with addressing the root causes of migration. Harris was widely seen as defensive in the interview and at one point said she also hadn’t been to Europe.

Jamal Simmons, a former communications director for Harris, acknowledged the Holt interview was “challenging” while adding that it was also three years ago and that “people should grow up.”

“The vice president’s an experienced politician, she’s been around for decades. She’s done a lot of interviews. You can go back and look at her history and see lots of interviews, both on camera and in print. But like everybody, she has a bad day from time to time. But what we can’t do is hold her to a standard because of one interview she did three years ago that wasn’t great, and then use that as the model for her entire history of media interactions,” Simmons said.

Harris was later interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in 2022, when she created news by saying that internal threats to democracy make the U.S. “weaker.”

She went on CBS’s “60 Minutes” in 2023 for an interview focused on the Biden administration’s pro-Israel stance a month after the Oct. 7 attacks. 

Harris has also participated in interviews with print reporters, including from The New York Times and Washington Post. But The Washington Post faced criticism after it included in a 2019 profile of Harris that she compared campaigns to prisons while talking to her sister, Maya, and then removed the quotes two years later. The outlet claimed they updated some biographical pieces ahead of Biden’s inauguration, Fox News reported at the time.

Some of the best reviews for Harris came when she did media interviews after Biden’s dismal debate performance, including with CNN’s Anderson Cooper immediately after the debate. Harris adamantly defended Biden, arguing that the president had a slow start but a strong finish.

“She’s very detailed in her thinking; she’s a lawyer so she knows how to argue a case. And I think we’re gonna see in this interview somebody who is much more comfortable in her job and very confident in her ability as a candidate for president,” Simmons said.

How much of a difference the CNN interview makes will depend on Harris, Walz and Bash, who all face different kinds of pressure.

Bash will take heat if she doesn’t ask some tough questions to Harris about her record, her defense of the Biden administration and tough issues such as the border. Trump’s campaign suggested 10 questions for Bash to ask, including why housing affordability isn’t a priority for Harris now and why the Biden administration hasn’t successfully lowered prices for Americans.

Harris and Walz will both need to be highly prepared, aggressive and charismatic — among other things.

Still, some Democrats downplayed the importance of Thursday night.

“It’s just an interview,” said Ivan Zapien, a former Democratic National Committee official.

“I’m not sure how many people will tune in and decide who they are voting for based on this. Good, bad, or indifferent, this too will pass,” he added “They have no time to dwell. The interview is more attractive to the press and elites than ordinary people.”