Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is deliberately shutting out the press knowing it vexes reporters, sources close to the campaign told Axios.
Journalists and press groups have lambasted the Harris-Walz campaign in recent weeks for restricting access and rarely making its candidates available, while the Republican ticket—especially vice presidential candidate JD Vance—has been much more open and accessible to media.
Axios said the Harris team “believes limiting interactions with the press is the right strategy,” noting the negative coverage resulting from unscripted media appearances by their GOP rivals. One key example would be the slew of unforced errors by former president Donald Trump and Vance for spreading false rumors about migrants eating people’s pets in Ohio.
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The news site tallied up the number of print and television media interviews each presidential ticket has given since July 21: Vance, with 59 appearances, has been far and away the most accessible, followed by Trump with 14. Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz has given just four interviews, and Harris three. In that period, Harris and Walz also held a combined zero press conferences, while Vance held 12 and Trump three.
Ian Sams, a spokesman for Harris, told CNN Harris is “going where people get their news, and in every setting she’s taking questions—often tough ones—about her plans and agenda.” He also mocked some of the methods Trump has used in an effort to influence the electorate.
“Maybe we’re completely wrong and a two hour live space with Elon Musk or hawking some sketchy crypto venture is the best way to reach battleground swing voters, but I doubt it,” Sams said.
In late August, the president of the White House News Photographers Association wrote a letter to Harris’ campaign slamming them for an “unprecedented reduction in access.”
“You always just have to do enough national stuff to keep the press off your ass,” Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist, told NBC News last week. “I think she should do as many interviews as possible in battleground states, but the rest is a waste of time.”
Trump himself pointed out the disparity in an unscripted appearance on Fox News talk show Gutfeld! on Wednesday (Axios’ tally of appearances did not include sitdowns with partisan commentators like the Republican ticket’s friendly interviews with Fox News personalities or Walz’s with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow).
“The interesting thing is she doesn’t do interviews,” Trump said, of why Harris isn’t subject to more questions from the media. “You would not see her come on to the show, I can tell you right now. She doesn’t like doing interviews.”
Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that the Harris campaign has promised more appearances on local and national outlets are on the way. The campaign also told Axios their candidates had been subject to “questions, often tough ones, about important issues” in media appearances, pointing to the vice president’s appearance with National Association of Black Journalists earlier this week.
Some Democrats have openly called on the ticket to better showcase its candidates. In a New York Times/Siena poll released earlier this month, 31 percent of those surveyed said they felt they need to learn more about Harris, while only 12 percent said the same about Trump.
“More. More. More,” Van Jones, a CNN commentator and former official in the Obama administration, said Tuesday evening. “The polls show the more you see Kamala, the more you like Kamala.”
