Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are sitting for their first formal interview since she became the Democratic nominee during a CNN prime-time special airing Thursday at 9 PM ET. Dana Bash will conduct the sit-down, which the network is billing as “the next test in her presidential bid.”
CNN says the interview “has taken on elevated significance because of the compressed race Harris is running after she became her party’s candidate and because of the way it mushroomed into an issue between the feuding campaigns.”
That might give you some sense of the attitude Bash and the network are bringing to the interview: Harris has something to prove to them and has to answer to GOP nominee Donald Trump’s criticism of her nascent campaign’s chosen media strategy. Bash could take a more balanced approach, of course. But the media hasn’t acquitted itself too well when it comes to Harris’ candidacy.
Look at how reporters were reacting when her campaign was a mere three weeks old and she had just picked Walz as her running mate.
“The Beltway press is angry that Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t sat down with them to talk about things like policy,” wrote Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas. “In their warped, archaic minds, they are important to the political process as a way to inform readers about the candidates.”
Harris already had a strong social media and internet presence and was communicating to the American people just fine, without the press serving as gatekeepers—and that’s probably what had the media’s knickers in a twist in the first place. Harris doesn’t need reporters in order to reach voters, and voters don’t need reporters to find out about her and her policies.
Now that Harris has agreed to an interview, there’s grumbling about how she’s not doing it on her own, because running mate Walz will be by her side. USA Today wrote a whole pearl-clutching story about it.
“Vice President Kamala Harris received criticism for not formally sitting down with the press since launching her presidential campaign,” wrote USA Today’s Savannah Kuchar. “Now, with her first interview lined up, she is facing new backlash for not doing the event alone.”
There is a long tradition of team interviews, of course. Yes, they’re rarely conducted this late in the race, but given what the Harris campaign has had to accomplish in about 40 days, it’s not at all unreasonable.
Meanwhile, Trump—or some ghostwriter on his campaign staff—has weighed in to try and work the refs.
“Dana Bash of CNN has a chance at greatness today,” Trump (or an aide who knows how to use punctuation) posted on Truth Social. “If she gave a fair but tough interview of Comrade Kamala Harris, she will expose her as being totally inept and ill suited for the job of President, much as I exposed Crooked Joe Biden during our now famous Debate. How cool would that be for Dana and CNN???”
All of this scrutiny makes Thursday’s interview as much a test for Bash and CNN as it is for Harris and Walz.
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