A campaign chair for Vice President Harris’s 2024 presidential bid said the notion that she dodged interviews during the campaign was “completely bull—t.”
“I think back and think we should have signaled more of our strategy early on about podcasts and who we were [trying to] reach and — but we had a limited amount of time to reach the people [we were trying to] reach and we were [trying to] go to them,” Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said on Tuesday’s “Pod Save America” episode.
“But being up against a narrative that we weren’t doing anything or we were afraid to have interviews, is completely bull—t,” she continued.
Harris faced increasing pressure to sit for interviews after she ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket. Her first major interview after becoming the party’s nominee, alongside her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), came in late August with CNN’s Dana Bash.
“Real people heard in some way that we were not going to have interviews, which was both not true and also so counter to any kind of standard that was put on [President-elect Trump] that I think that was a problem,” O’Malley Dillon said in her “Pod Save America” appearance.
During election season, targeted interviews were used by the vice president’s campaign with an aim of reaching specific audiences. She did local outlet interviews as well as radio interviews and podcasts. Harris also joined the podcasts “Call Her Daddy” and “All The Smoke.”
Trump’s 2024 election win has rattled Democrats, who also lost the House and Senate this year. There have been ongoing conversations in the party about what led to their struggles at the polls this year, with some centrists saying the party went too left and liberals saying it didn’t go left enough.
The Hill has reached out to the Trump transition team for comment.
