Kamala Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said during an interview on Tuesday that the media criticism of the vice president not doing enough interviews in the early days of her campaign was “completely bulls—.”
“I do think a narrative, 107 days … two weeks talking about how she didn’t do interviews, which you know she was doing plenty, but we were doing in our own way, we had to be the nominee, we had to find a running mate, and do a roll-out, I mean there was all these things that you kind of want to factor in. But real people heard, in some way, that we were not going to have interviews, which was both not true and also so counter to any kind of standard that was put on Trump, that I think that was a problem,” Dillon told “Pod Save America” host Dan Pfeiffer, noting that she was not a “media hater.”
Dillon and top Harris campaign officials David Plouffe, Quentin Fulks, and Stephanie Cutter spoke to “Pod Save America” for their first interview since President-elect Donald Trump’s decisive victory three weeks ago.
After President Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, he quickly endorsed Harris as his replacement on the ticket. Harris did not sit for her first interview, which was held alongside her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, until August 29, 39 days after the president’s announcement.
Jen O’Malley Dillon, campaign manager for Democratic presidential candidate US Vice President Kamala Harris is seen before Harris gives her concession speech at Howard University in Washington, DC, November 6, 2024. ((Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images))
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“Being up against a narrative that we weren’t doing anything, or we were afraid to have interviews is completely bulls—, and also like took hold a little bit, and we just, it gave us another thing we had to fight back for that Trump never had to worry about,” Dillion continued.
She also argued that when Harris did do an interview, the questions were “small and processy,” as Cutter added the questions were “dumb.” She said the questions Harris got were not “informing a voter” who was trying to learn more about her.
Cutter said earlier on in the discussion that Harris got questions they knew “voters were not going to care about.”
“I’m not here to say that you know the whole system was focused on us incorrectly,” she added. “That does a disservice to voters and I think back and think, we should have signaled more of our strategy early on about podcasts and who we were trying to reach, but we had a limited amount of time to reach the people we were trying to reach.”
Vice President Kamala Harris’ media strategy came under sharper scrutiny after she lost the election to President-elect Donald Trump. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) (Alex Wong)
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Harris was criticized by several pundits and media outlets for not doing interviews early on in her campaign. As she started doing more interviews with traditional media outlets, as well as locals news and podcast appearances, she was called out for avoiding specifics and dodging questions.
The Harris campaign had also been in talks with Joe Rogan about doing an interview on his hugely popular podcast, but it didn’t end up happening. Rogan had suggested that the Harris campaign put a condition on a possible interview with the podcaster about avoiding “marijuana legalization” talk.
In the aftermath of Harris’ loss, several outlets and political commentators pointed to the vice president’s interview on “The View,” where she said she wouldn’t have done anything different from President Biden in the last four years.
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