Anxious Kamala Harris is on track to have the fewest interviews of any candidate, and even Democrats are nervous
Kamala Harris is giving the press — and Americans — the silent treatment.
The vice president is on track to give the fewest interviews ever given by a major-party presidential candidate, and it’s not just because she entered the race historically late.
Since President Biden ended his re-election campaign on July 21, his 59-year-old second lady has given just six speaking engagements, leaving allies and critics alike wanting more.
Harris has been scrupulous about her speaking venues, opting for relatively friendly settings, such as an Aug. 29 interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, where she was joined by her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. She also sat down with Philadelphia’s ABC station, Spanish-language radio host Chiquibaby and on a panel at a meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ).
By comparison, former President Donald Trump has given at least three times as many interviews in the same period, some lasting at least an hour, such as his recent one-on-one sit-down with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk about X Spaces. He and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), have highlighted Harris’s silence by holding more meetings with the press, and Vance has become a regular guest on the network’s Sunday morning public affairs shows.
Even in her limited public availability, Harris has not been able to avoid the awkward moments and “word salad” for which her critics have so regularly mocked her.
In the CNN interview, Harris responded to Bash’s first question, asking him to explain the many apparent policy shifts since his failed 2020 White House bid. Insisting “my values have not changed”,” giving the Trump campaign another opportunity to attack her.
When asked by the NABJ panel about his support for reparations for slavery, he responded: “We need to tell the truth about the generational impact of our history, in terms of the generational impact of slavery, the generational impact of residential segregation, of Jim Crow laws. I could go on and on and on. These are facts that have an impact, and we need to tell the truth about them. And we need to tell the truth about them in a way that is about finding solutions.”
“We as Americans have a beautiful character,” she told Action News 6 ABC anchor Brian Taff of Philadelphia last week after being asked how she planned to lower prices. “We have ambitions, aspirations and dreams, but not everyone necessarily has access to the resources that can help them fuel those dreams and ambitions.”
These moments would be enough to make any campaign want its candidate to show less of his face, but psychiatrist and body language expert Carole Lieberman told The Post she suspected there was a deeper problem: that Harris is “anxious” when questioned.
“Harris’s campaign team may not fully understand the psychological roots of why she is so eager to not be ‘outed,’ but they see the symptoms and have figured out that the less we see them, the better,” said Lieberman, who has not treated Harris and acknowledged to The Post that he plans to vote for Trump in November.
“If I had to give her advice, I would tell her to do less advertising, unless it was in situations where she could be more sure that they liked her.”
The Trump campaign and its allies have argued that the reason for Harris’ silence is that she and Walz are hiding their true agenda behind a smokescreen constructed by left-leaning media outlets.
But it is not only Republicans and Trump supporters who are criticizing the vice president’s low profile.
“I think she should be more present in local media and do two or three (interviews) at each stop,” said a Democratic operative close to Harris’ campaign.
“It reaches real voters in battleground states far more than cable news. Those are the voters who will decide the election.”
Lieberman agreed, noting that “focusing on local media in key states is a safer bet because it would be less anxious and the campaign could more easily hide or distract from any missteps on a smaller platform than on a national one.”
The Democratic source said “maybe their strategy is working” (noting that Harris is still polling well), but questioned how long that would last.
Kamala Harris is out of step with things…
Swing…and a miss
On the issues that matter most in three key states, Kamala Harris proved she was out of touch in Thursday’s interview:
ARIZONA
Main topic: immigration
Fifty-eight percent of Arizonans from both parties believe the United States has no control over its border, a reality they see every day as a border state, according to a poll by Redfield and Wilton Strategies.
Kam’s response: CNN’s Dana Bash claimed Harris was in charge of “root causes” (eschewing the term used at the time, “border czar”) and even then Harris corrected her, saying she was only tasked with dealing with “northern Central America.” So she sidestepped all responsibility for the flood of migrants from Venezuela and other South American nations (and maybe Nicaragua? What counts as “northern?”). Harris insisted the biggest problem was that a recent border bill failed to pass, while she has been in office for three and a half years without any action.
MICHIGAN
Main topic: automotive industry
Only 20% of Michiganders, home to much of the U.S. auto industry, support an electric vehicle mandate, the lowest of any state surveyed, according to Morning Consult.
Kam’s response: “You mentioned the Green New Deal. I have always believed, and worked on it, that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent issue that we need to apply parameters to that include meeting deadlines.” Harris has previously said those deadlines include getting rid of gas-powered cars.
PENNSYLVANIA
Main topic: Energy and fracking
Eighty-three percent of Pennsylvanians believe drilling more oil and gas fields in the U.S. would reduce costs, and 86 percent say it would improve national security, according to Morning Consult.
Kam’s response: “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,” she said in 2019. In the interview, she claimed she no longer wanted to ban fracking, but insisted, “My values haven’t changed.” Harris said, hesitantly, that she still favored the Green New Deal, but would make an exception for fracking.
“Without additional big moments, I’m not sure how to keep the excitement going without interviews or involvement from social media influencers,” the agent said.
“In politics, you have to know when to fight and when to dance,” another Democratic source told The Post. “Harris should sit down with the New York Post and show the American people that she can do both.”
Harris’ campaign had claimed it was on a path to reach voters “not in the traditional ways that people have done it in the past,” campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon told Axios last month.
O’Malley Dillon added that the campaign would focus on reaching out to voters by meeting them on the ground and having surrogates and influencers deliver the message on Harris’ behalf.
But that has left observers wondering what he has to hide.
Lieberman suggested Harris suffers from “imposter syndrome” as she doubts her own qualifications to be the next president.
“Her giggles, her grimaces, her big hand movements are all reflections of this anxiety,” he added, noting that “Kamala was able to suppress her giggles” during her Sept. 10 debate with Trump, but “she made up for it with bigger grimaces.”
While Harris has rarely given on-the-record interviews, she often speaks off the record to reporters for about five minutes in the back of Air Force Two during her travels, answering questions on a variety of topics but not allowing her words to be published.
Those informal question-and-answer sessions are designed to improve relations between Harris and the press and steer coverage in a more favorable direction, and they began before she replaced Biden as the top contender on the Democratic ticket.
The outgoing president made similar gestures on Air Force Two while he was vice president to Barack Obama.
Harris’s campaign did not immediately respond to a query from The Post.
