The Harris-Walz campaign responded to criticism for the vice president’s sparse media availability by saying that Vice President Kamala Harris had just had a busy schedule.
The campaign has faced criticism over Harris’s intermittent unscripted media Q & As as the 2024 presidential race kicks into gear. Former Atlanta mayor-turned-prominent Harris surrogate Keisha Lance Bottoms appeared on CNN’s “The Lead” with Jake Tapper in an interview for which she was asked why Harris, as opposed to her Republican opponent former President Donald Trump, has not submitted to more frequent interviews or availability from the press.
“Why?” Tapper asked. “Why is she not doing more interviews to talk about her policies and answer some of the questions that voters have about her policies and her change on her views on some of them?
“Well, Jake, she’s done interviews,” Lance-Bottoms pushed back. “And I know that we would love- or you would love to see her sit down every single day with CNN and do interviews. But it’s that she’s a very busy person. She’s the vice president as well as a candidate.”
When Tapper pressed further, Bottoms said: “We heard her today talk about her views on these policies,” she continued. “It may not be in the format that the media would like. It may not be that she’s sitting down doing a one-on-one interview, but we heard her today in Georgia talk about her stance on reproductive freedom and if she’s elected as president of the United States, how she would use the power of the pen to make sure that these freedoms are protected.”
Harris and Walz had done 15 interviews since last month. In the last 29 days Trump and his running mate Senator JD Vance have done all of 55 interviews by comparison.
The vice president has faced blowback from some media outlets — The New York Times and Axios among them — over their strategy of being less open to the press than ex-candidate Biden throughout the 2020 campaign.
However, Harris connected with Oprah Winfrey, and was joined in conversation by the likes of Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, and other famous celebrities.
Still, Harris is facing extra scrutiny for not having taken formal questions from the press since locking up the Democratic nomination.
