Vice President Harris will sit down next week for a live interview with radio star Charlamagne tha God in Detroit as she seeks to appeal to Black voters and keep a key swing state in the Democratic column.
The Tuesday interview in Detroit also will come days after former President Trump, Harris’s opponent in the presidential race, insulted the city by saying derisively that the “whole country” will end up being like Detroit if Harris wins election.
Charlamagne announced the interview on his “The Breakfast Club” program Friday, saying the conversation, called “We The People: A Conversation with Kamala Harris and Charlamagne Tha God,” will give “local voices from Detroit and voices from all the battleground states to get the opportunity to ask Vice President Kamala Harris some questions.”
“I know we got some pressing issues to talk about. The future of the nation is decided by who we elect,” Charlamagne said. “So I want to tell Detroit and the whole country, don’t miss an event we are calling We the People, a conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris and myself.”
The conversation is scheduled to take place at 5 p.m. EDT on Tuesday.
The interview will broadcast live and stream across 130 iHeartRadio stations nationwide and on the iHeartRadio App.
Charlamagne’s show, “The Breakfast Club,” reaches some 8 million people, many of whom are Black or other racial minorities.
Black voters are a critical voting bloc for Democrats, and Detroit is one of the nation’s largest majority-Black cities in a battleground state. But there have been signs for concern for Harris and Democrats that she is not winning enough Black male voters, in particular.
Former President Obama suggested in stark terms that Black male voters in particular were “coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses” to not vote for Harris, adding, “I’ve got a problem with that.”
This will be Harris’s 10th visit to Detroit this year, but she has spent the last week speaking with media around the country, including sitting for an interview with “60 Minutes,” the popular “Call Her Daddy” podcast and Howard Stern’s radio show.
She had previously appeared on Charlamagne’s Comedy Central show in 2021 following President Biden’s inauguration, but the interview with Charlamagne became heated when he insinuated Harris was the “real president.”
“It’s Joe Biden. And don’t start talking like a Republican about asking whether or not he’s president,” Harris said at the time. “It’s Joe Biden, and I’m vice president, and my name is Kamala Harris.”
Earlier this year, Charlamagne was critical of the Democratic ticket, telling Politico the presidential race was a competition between “the cowards, the crooks and the couch.”
Now, with Harris as the Democratic candidate, Charlamagne is all-in for the Democratic Party.
However, he has also taken time to praise former President Trump, arguing the campaign’s “America First” messaging is a strong strategy. He also said a recent ad from Trump was “impactful” and “effective.”
— Updated at 2:40 p.m.