10 Days: Kamala Harris has not held a press conference since emerging as presumptive Democratic nominee
Critics have noticed that Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t held a formal press conference since President Biden ended his re-election campaign.
Vice President Kamala Harris has gone 10 days without holding a press conference since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Harris announced that she'd locked up the nomination late on July 22, declaring that she'd won commitments of backing from a majority of the nearly 4,000 delegates to next month's Democratic National Convention. She’s since hit the campaign trail, spoken at various events, and even chatted with reporters here and there, but hasn’t done a formal press conference or wide-ranging interview in the 10 days that have followed.
Harris, who became the likely nominee without receiving a single primary vote when President Biden announced he would step aside, has been so elusive that The New York Times published excerpts from an interview she conducted last year to see where her answers "land now."
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Much of the Democratic Party – including governors, senators and House members as well as party leaders – quickly coalesced behind Harris following Biden's blockbuster news. But critics have started to take notice that Harris hasn’t faced tough questions since.
National Review senior writer Noah Rothman asked his social media followers on Wednesday, "When is Kamala Harris going to hold a press conference?"
The RNC Research account on X noted that she has only done "teleprompter speeches" over the past 10 days and conservative pundit Ben Shapiro said Harris "has not answered ONE difficult question in the last week and a half."
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NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham expects her to follow President Biden’s 2020 playbook, when he was famously accused of hiding in his basement during the COVID pandemic.
"Kamala Harris should absolutely hold a press conference. One would expect it when she names her vice-presidential pick. But we cannot expect her to break from Biden's serial avoidance of press conferences," Graham told Fox News Digital.
"Since the 2020 campaign, we have witnessed the bizarre spectacle of Donald Trump granting wide access to networks that suggest he's a fascist and hammer him daily, while Biden and Harris won't grant interviews to media outlets that gurgle all over them and their ‘historic accomplishments,’" he continued. "Either they think the press can never be servile enough or they are projecting a complete lack of confidence in their efforts to put complete sentences together."
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DePauw University media studies professor Jeffrey McCall believes the Harris campaign is "well aware that Biden dodged the media throughout his 2020 campaign and still got elected."
"The Harris camp is also well aware that their candidate doesn't do well in unscripted settings, not to mention that a presser or legitimate sit-down interview would necessarily require her to defend some of her positions, previous statements and record. Thus, a rerun of the Biden basement campaign sounds pretty good, as long as you throw in a couple of rallies with Megan Thee Stallion," McCall added, referring to the rapper who appeared at Harris’ Atlanta rally on Tuesday.
He suggested that Harris doesn’t feel pressure "to do a press conference just because she has fallen into the nomination" because Democrats will support her either way.
"The supporters rallying around her don't expect her to be accountable and have little interest in her policy positions and so on. That she's not Biden, or Trump, is sufficient for those supporters," McCall said.
"From a rhetorical strategy standpoint, however, it would behoove Harris to actually do a presser and do real journalistic interviews," he continued. "At some point, it would seem, she'll have to attract moderates or undecided voters who want to see her take questions."
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Democratic National Convention kicks off Aug. 19 in Chicago.
Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.