Islamabad, Aug 29: US Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been the Democratic standard-bearer, will have her first interview on Thursday. Republicans have been very critical of her, claiming that she has been dodging difficult questions.
During a campaign tour to Georgia, Harris and her running partner Tim Walz will speak with CNN. This will be a significant test of the excitement around her campaign in the final ten weeks leading up to election day.
The spokesperson for Donald Trump criticized her for not conducting the interview alone and charged that she was using the vivacious governor of Minnesota, Scott Walz, as a “human shield.” On Thursday, Republican and former president Trump will campaign separately in the crucial states of Wisconsin and Michigan. He is eager to reclaim the spotlight from Harris following her meteoric climb.
This CNN interview with journalist Dana Bash, which airs at 9:00 p.m. local time, will mark Harris and Walz’s first in-depth appearance since President Joe Biden withdrew from the campaign for president on July 21. It’s also the first since the party rode a wave of enthusiasm after her nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
In response to the Republican criticism, Ian Sams, a spokesman for Harris, stated that the “joint ticket interview is an election year summer tradition going back 20 years.” He listed prior interviews that were “almost always” conducted during the convention, including ones with Biden, Harris, and Trump, as well as his running partner at the time, Mike Pence. Sams stated on X, “Harris/Walz join this rich tradition on CNN tomorrow.”
However, the election of 2024 will be anything but conventional. With one of the largest political upheavals in US history, Harris, 59, has been thrown onto the campaign trail at a record-breaking pace despite having no prior experience. However, she has only had a few conversations with reporters while out on the campaign trail thus far.
“Shield of humanity”
Republicans have been using her lack of an interview or news conference over that period as ammunition for their attacks, claiming that people have been kept in the dark about her ideas.According to Trump’s spokesperson Jason Miller, “They have a candidate they can’t wheel out to the media,” on Wednesday. Miller predicted that Tim Walz will be used by them as a human shield for Kamala Harris.
In recent weeks, Trump has conducted a number of interviews, most of which have been with benevolent interviewers such as Elon Musk, the CEO of X. He has also delivered lengthy monologues at two press conferences. Harris has just fulfilled her promise; on August 8, she stated that she intended to schedule an interview by the end of the month. Her interview will be studied carefully in this exceptional year where major political set-pieces have shown to be unpredictable.
Democrats replaced Joe Biden in the race for president due to concerns about his age and mental capacity following his clumsy performance in a June 27 debate with Trump, which was appropriately broadcast on CNN. The fact that earlier in her tenure as vice president, Harris gained a reputation for making awkward word choices and unplanned gaffes, only serves to increase the pressure.
In a well-known interview with NBC in 2021, she asserted that “we’ve been to the border” with Mexico even though she had not, following Biden’s appointment to investigate the reasons behind illegal migration. She responded, “And I haven’t been to Europe,” when pressed further, and then started laughing.
Since then, Republicans have taken advantage of the conversation to attack Harris on the border dispute, which was one of the Democrats’ main points of weakness going into the election. Harris, a former prosecutor, would be hoping to have a greater influence from her first debate with Trump on September 10.
