Harris faces key test with first campaign interview

US Vice President Kamala Harris will give her first interview Thursday since becoming the Democratic standard-bearer, after intense criticism from Republicans that she has been hiding from tough questions.

Harris and her running mate Tim Walz will sit down with CNN during a campaign trip to Georgia, in a major test of the buzz surrounding her campaign on the 10-week sprint to election day.

Donald Trump’s spokesman has slammed her for not doing the interview alone and accused her of using energetic Minnesota Governor Walz as a “human shield.”

Republican former president Trump, itching to take the limelight back from Harris after her rapid rise, will separately be campaigning in the battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin on Thursday.

The CNN encounter with journalist Dana Bash, which is being broadcast at 9:00 pm local time (0100 GMT Friday) will be the first in-depth interview for Harris and Walz since President Joe Biden dropped out of the White House race on July 21.

It is also the first since the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which saw the party riding a wave of energy following her nomination.

Harris’s spokesman Ian Sams responded to the Republican criticisms by saying the “joint ticket interview is an election year summer tradition going back 20 years.”

He cited previous interviews given “almost always” around convention time, including by Trump and his then-running mate Mike Pence, and Biden and Harris.

“Harris/Walz join this rich tradition on CNN tomorrow,” Sams said on X.

But then, the 2024 election is anything but traditional.

A relatively untested Harris, 59, has been thrust onto the campaign stage at record speed after one of the biggest upheavals in US political history.

Yet so far she has only had a handful of exchanges with reporters on the campaign trail.

– ‘Human shield’ –

Her failure to give an interview or press conference in that time has given Republicans fodder for attacks, saying voters have been left in the dark about her policies.

“They have a candidate they can’t wheel out to the media,” Trump spokesman Jason Miller told Newsmax on Wednesday.

“What they’re going to do is they’re going to use Tim Walz as a human shield for Kamala Harris,” Miller said.

Trump has done a series of interviews in recent weeks, but they have mainly been with sympathetic interviewers including X boss Elon Musk. He has also given two press conferences, which included long monologues.

Harris said on August 8 that she wanted to get an interview scheduled by the end of the month, so she has just lived up to her pledge.

Her interview will be closely watched in an extraordinary year where big set-piece political events have shown their ability to produce surprises.

It was Joe Biden’s stumbling performance during a June 27 debate with Trump — coincidentally also on CNN — that caused Democrats to dump him over fears about his age and mental acuity.

Further adding to the pressure is the fact that Harris developed a reputation for word salads and gaffes in unscripted settings earlier in her spell as vice president.

In one notorious exchange with NBC in 2021, after Biden designated her to look into the causes of illegal migration, she insisted that “we’ve been to the border” with Mexico even when she had not.

Pressed further, she retorted “And I haven’t been to Europe” before breaking into a laugh.

Republicans have since used the exchange to hammer Harris over the border issue, one of the Democrats’ biggest vulnerabilities heading into the election.

As a former prosecutor, Harris may well be looking to her first debate with Trump on September 10 to make a bigger impact.