Kamala Harris and Tim Walz today in their first major TV interview

2024-08-29 20:21:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Vice President Kamala Harris and Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz will give the first major televised interview of their presidential campaign today as the pair conduct a campaign bus tour of southeast Georgia.

Thursday's interview with CNN's Dana Bash presents an opportunity for Ms. Harris to quell criticism that she has shied away from interviews and provides a new platform to present her campaign outlook as well as practice political skills ahead of a debate with former -President Donald Trump, which is scheduled to be held on September 10.

The interview also poses a risk, at a time when her team aims to maintain enthusiasm and support following President Joe Biden's exit from the race and last week's Democratic National Convention.

Giving joint interviews in an election year is a common thing in politics, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, Donald Trump and Mike Pence, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have all done such interviews during the presidential race.

The difference is that all these other candidates had previously also done interviews alone. Ms. Harris has not done a single interview since she became the party's primary candidate 5 weeks ago, and not even earlier, when she ran alongside President Joe Biden, before he withdrew.

The interview with the CNN network will be broadcast at 9 pm local time. It will be pre-registered at 1:45 p.m. The interview comes as the pair take a two-day bus tour of southeast Georgia, culminating in a campaign rally in Savannah.

Ms. Harris, while serving as Vice President, has conducted television and written interviews with The Associated Press and other media more often than the president, with the exception of the period after the poor debate with Donald Trump, when Joe Biden gave several interviews in a short period of time, while trying to convince the public and the party that he was capable of leading the country for another four years.

Ms. Harris's media absences in recent months have become one of the main points for which Republicans are attacking her. Mr. Trump's campaign has kept track of how many days have passed since she became the candidate and has not given interviews.

On Wednesday, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Mr. Trump's former spokeswoman, suggested that Ms. Harris needed "a babysitter" so she's not giving the interview alone, but with Mr. Walz.

"They know Kamala Harris can't do an interview alone," she said on Fox News' "Fox & Friends."

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump has given interviews mostly to conservative media outlets, although he has held more open press conferences in recent weeks.

After the CNN interview, Mr. Walz will leave and Ms. Harris will continue the bus tour alone. She will attend a campaign meeting before returning to Washington.

Ms. Harris's campaign believes that to win over Mr. Trump in Georgia in November, she must make inroads into Republican strongholds across the state.

Ms Harris's campaign communications director, Michael Tyler, said the bus tour provided an opportunity "to go to places we don't normally go and make sure we're competing in all the communities".

According to a Gallup poll, Democrats' enthusiasm for their November vote has grown over the past few months.

About 8 in 10 Democrats now say they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting, compared with 55 percent who said so in March.

Over the same period, enthusiasm among Republicans has grown much less, and about two-thirds of Republicans say they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting./ Voa