“Race and gender” are key criteria in Vice President Kamala Harris’s selection of a media personality to host her first sit down interview since joining the presidential race, a report Monday in Politico Playbook revealed.
The criteria spotlights the close-mindedness of Harris’s world view, as she attempts to rally support from rural white voters in swing states. The demographic is key to winning the 2024 presidential election, political experts believe.
Harris will purportedly sit for an interview this week as part of her campaign’s ramped-up strategy heading into the post-Labor Day push, Axios reported, but questions remain about who she will select to host the interview.
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— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) August 27, 2024
“Almost everyone we talked to said Harris will consider race and gender in making her choice, and that she would be keen to sit down with a Black and/or female reporter,” Playbook reported Tuesday.
Who Harris should grant the interview to is raising tensions within the Harris campaign, Playbook revealed:
Who should you send your pitch to? One source of intrigue concerns who in Harris world will actually make this decision. BRIAN FALLON, the campaign’s senior adviser for communications, is generally considered the key person. But the interview has to be coordinated with Harris’s official office, where the communications director is KIRSTEN ALLEN. We hear there are some tensions.
Another source with knowledge of the process said that STEPHANIE CUTTER, senior adviser for message and strategy, will have an outsized role, as well. Campaign chair JEN O’MALLEY DILLON and senior advisor DAVID PLOUFFE represent another camp. And MAYA HARRIS and TONY WEST, Harris’s sister and brother-in-law, will weigh in with their own views. The political operatives on this list all have long-term relationships with TV networks and their major talent. But unlike Biden, Harris herself doesn’t have the same deep history with the journalists now wooing her.
— What’s the goal? There has been considerable debate in Harris world about the purpose and timing of the interview. The main narrative in the political press is that Harris needs to do a lengthy serious interview with a brand-name news anchor who will push her on issues.
Harris has not held an unscripted press conference or unscripted sit-down interview about policy solutions for 37 days since joining the presidential race. The media have not interviewed Harris on television since June 24, 2024, and the last time the press reportedly questioned her at a solo news conference was eight months ago, on December 2, 2023.
A recent poll found 89 percent of Americans said it’s either “very” or “somewhat” important a presidential candidate answer questions from the press.
Harris might be avoiding the media for two reasons. First, the Harris campaign might be worried about its candidate’s likability and her ability to speak off the cuff about policies without delivering a devastating gaffe. Here is a sampling of Harris’s word salads.
Second, the Harris campaign is stuck in a “catch-22.” Speaking about policies to fix crime, inflation, and border security would undermine the Biden-Harris administration’s claim of having solved those key issues. Yet Harris must tout the administration’s policy successes to validate her record and candidacy. More is here on Harris’s radical record.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.