What’s at Stake in Harris’s First Media Interview as Presidential Candidate

Following her rapid rise to the top of the Democratic Party ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris has a lot at stake in her first extended media interview as the Democratic presidential nominee.

CNN chief political correspondent and anchor Dana Bash interviewed Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, which will air at 9 p.m. ET on Aug. 29. The sit-down interview was recorded at a local Black-owned restaurant in Savannah, Georgia. The pair are touring the Peach State by bus this week, visiting rural communities and suburbs in a bid to consolidate support across the crucial battleground.

After launching her candidacy on July 21, Harris has blitzed across the country, slashing many of former President Donald Trump’s leads on President Joe Biden in national and battleground state polls.

Harris, however, has said little to the press outside of brief gaggles with reporters on the campaign trail. She promised earlier this month to give an unscripted interview before September, but it left her open to criticism from Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who have sat for multiple interviews.

CNN released a short preview of the interview on Thursday afternoon. Bash asked Harris about her shifts in policy since the end of her 2019 presidential campaign.

“How should voters look at some of the changes that you’ve made, that you’ve explained some of here in your policy?” Bash asked, “Should they feel comfortable and confident that what you’re saying now is going to be your policy moving forward?”

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Harris responded: “The most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed.

“You mentioned the Green New Deal. I have always believed, and I have worked on it, that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time.

“My value around what we need to do to secure our border, that value has not changed.”

Harris also vowed to appoint a Republican to a cabinet position if she wins in November.

“I think it’s important to have people at the table—when some of the most important decisions are being made—that have different views, different experiences,” she said.

In an already tight election, the remaining undecided voters are crucial to either candidate’s success, particularly with the wild card of third parties.

Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is removing his name from many battleground state ballots after suspending his campaign last week and throwing his support to Trump. It is not yet clear, however, which ballots will keep his name and which will not, nor what impact his presence might have on the final result. Michigan and Wisconsin declined this week to remove Kennedy’s name from their ballots, citing state laws.

Jill Stein and Cornel West—two left-leaning candidates—are polling as high as 3 percent in some states.

For Harris, her first media interview and the coming Sept. 10 ABC debate with Trump are critical as she races through the final 67 days before the election.

“This is a very big deal because the opposition, commentators, pundits, across the board, have been asking about her policy positions … and she has not had interviews like this yet or a press conference,” Robert Y. Shapiro, a political science professor at Columbia University, told The Epoch Times.

Shapiro said the same could be asked about Trump’s policies, but the media has heard much less from Harris. Tonight’s CNN interview “will get an enormous amount of attention,” he said.

“She has been preparing for the debate … and it looks like she has been taking all this seriously,” he said.

Aaron Dusso, a political science professor at Indiana University Indianapolis, said that while the stakes are fairly low in many of these interviews, candidates can inadvertently flub an answer.

“The opposition is always looking for ways to use what the candidate says against them, and interviews like this provide a lot of potential fodder,” Dusso told The Epoch Times.

When NBC News’ Lester Holt interviewed Harris in 2021, he asked her why she had not yet visited the southern border while tasked with a project exploring the root causes of migration from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

“And I haven’t been to Europe,” Harris replied. “And I mean, I don’t understand the point that you’re making. I’m not discounting the importance of the border.”

Trump called Harris Biden’s “Border Czar” and blamed her for the chaos at the southern border.

He suggested that if Bash conducts a “tough interview,” Harris will be exposed as “ill-suited for the job of President.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the Harris campaign for comment but didn’t receive a reply by publication time.

Dusso said Trump’s presence in the political arena makes it “less clear what could be said that would truly be considered ‘out of bounds,’” but other potential missteps remain—Harris and Walz could say something that is construed as “too liberal” and then back down days later after receiving criticism, Dusso said.

“If Trump has taught us anything, it is that if you make a ‘bold’ statement (even if it was unintended), you need to hold to it and try to back it up,” Dusso said, adding that voters respond to that kind of ownership.

“They don’t respond well to politicians who back down from their statements at the first sight of pushback.”