Watch: One of the Most Awkward Kamala Moments Yet
Kamala Harris rarely takes questions. Like, very rarely. Axios published a story yesterday outlining the Harris-Walz campaign strategy of avoiding scrutiny, interviews and questions - and quantified how that approach has been playing out. Since Joe Biden was shoved out of the race by his party in July (Nancy Pelosi bizarrely now claims that Harris won an "open primary" because nobody challenged her), Kamala Harris has done exactly two televised interviews. In two months. One was national, one was local. We wrote entire pieces about each because they're so infrequent. The CNN interview wasn't good for her. The local Philadelphia sit-down was considerably worse. She has done one interview with a national print publication, and zero press conferences. She and her running mate have done a total of six of these interviews, combined, since Biden was ousted.
By comparison, Donald Trump and JD Vance have done more than 70 interviews and press conferences over that same stretch of time - not including dozens of interviews Axios excluded because they occurred with conservative-leaning hosts or podcasters (I'd simply note that so many gaffes and self-destructive comments from politicians come in 'friendly' settings). So in reality, the disparity is even greater than these statistics suggest:
Here is Axios' summary of the strategy:
It's essential to point out that all of this ducking and dodging could not be sustainable for them without media complicity and acceptance. Journalists are demonstrating that they are willing to humiliate themselves and hasten their industry's obsolescence in the name of helping their political team win, so Team Kamala's decision to avoid questions is hard to argue with, politically speaking. They are getting very little heat for it, and much of the 'news' media are carrying her message anyway, directly rewarding her approach:
And it's not hard to see why Kamala's handlers want to stick to rehearsed, non-specific, non-extemporaneous responses, while avoiding anything approaching challenging questions. Consider this summary written by Harris-friendly NBC News about her recent forum with the National Association of Black Journalists:
The applause stops very early. Amid the silence, Harris rapidly shakes hands with the three journalists, looking less than pleased, then waves to the quiet crowd without looking at them, and makes a beeline for the exit. Then the three media members just stand there, exchanging uncomfortable glances about what had just transpired:
