Former Biden aide slams Harris campaign for blaming media after loss
Former Biden White House aide Meghan Hays said the Harris-Walz campaign is unfairly pinning blame on the media for its loss in the presidential election.
Hays, the White House director of of message planning in 2021 and '22, was responding to remarks from Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon on the "Pod Save America" podcast earlier this week.
O'Malley Dillon said the narrative that Harris was afraid of doing more interviews early in her brief campaign was "completely bulls‑‑‑," and criticized the journalists who eventually did her.
"We would do an interview and Stephanie's point, the questions were small and processy and about like..." she said, before Stephanie Cutter, a senior adviser on the Harris campaign, cut in.
"Dumb," Cutter said of the interview questions.
Hays, during a Friday Fox News appearance highlighted by Grabien, said the narrative started for a reason.
“She did not do an interview for the first 30-some days, I think that the media latched on to that, and then when they did ask her questions, it was more about why she wasn’t doing the interviews,” Hays said.
“But that, again, you’re playing into the narrative there, so I do think they missed the mark on this, I do think they could have had more of a local media strategy, they could have had more interviews that they did do.”
O'Malley Dillon added on the podcast that their frustration with the media raised fundamental quotes about how campaign are covered.
"They were not informing a voter who was trying to listen to learn more or to understand," she said. "And I'm not here to say that that, you know, the whole system was focused on us incorrectly."
"I'm just saying, like, again, of the things we need to explore as we move forward as a campaign and as a country, that does a disservice to voters," she continued.
Hays advised Harris's advisors against playing the “blame game.”
“So I don't necessarily think that this blame game is set in the right direction either, but I understand that they are in a spot where they have to explain why they lost, so I understand why they have to blame somebody, I guess," Hays said.
Cutter also noted during the podcast how much Harris's inability to break away from President Biden proved problematic, in retrospect. She said the vice president, out of loyalty and tradition, was "unwilling" to be seen as publicly criticizing the president.
“So our focus was let’s look to the future. Let’s describe her and her approach to things. Let’s use policies, future-looking policies to demonstrate that difference,” Cutter said. “But in the end, you know, we’ve all seen the data. It’s, too many people thought that you’d be a continuation. Which on the economy was, you know, the incumbent killer.”
Exit polls show she lost voters whose top issues were the economy and immigration.