The senior aide said that Harris had a 'truncated schedule,' but intended to ramp up appearances in the remaining 50 days
Axelrod calls for Harris to do more interviews: ‘Flood the zone’
Former Obama senior adviser David Axelrod argued on CNN this week that Vice President Kamala Harris needs to do more media interviews in the remaining weeks of her presidential campaign.
Brian Fallon, the Harris campaign's senior advisor for communications, said during a recent interview with Politico that voters and the media shouldn't "read too much into" Vice President Kamala Harris's lack of interviews.
"Number one, people should not read too much into what some have described as a shortage or a lack of interviews in the first six weeks of the campaign," Fallon told Politico's Eugene Daniels.
Harris spoke to the National Association of Black Journalists on Tuesday in her second large-profile interview since emerging as the nominee. Harris has also spoken to local radio stations in recent weeks, in addition to sitting down with Oprah Winfrey, who endorsed her for president at the DNC.
"She had a lot of work that she had to do in a very truncated schedule just to get the campaign off the ground," Fallon said.
Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (L) joins U.S. television producer Oprah Winfrey at a 'Unite for America' live streaming rally in Farmington Hills, Michigan, on September 19, 2024. ((Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images))
Fallon also argued that Harris' media appearances as vice president spoke to what voters should expect of her press interviews in the remaining 50 days until Election Day.
"Because Kirsten Allen, who has run her communications office on the official side, had her doing a heavy rotation of daytime talk shows, national print interviews with magazines, national sit-downs with television outlets like 60 Minutes late last year, cable hits — she did like 80-plus interviews in the first seven months of this year. And so that is a default setting for Kamala Harris in terms of media engagement," Fallon said.
Fallon added, "the remaining 50 days of this campaign will look like… something closer to that."
Senior Harris advisor Keisha Lance Bottoms recently brushed off Harris' lack of press interviews during an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper.
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"Why is she not doing more interviews to talk about her policies and answer some of the questions that voters have about her policies and her change on her views on some of them?" Tapper asked.
"Well, Jake, she’s done interviews," Lance-Bottoms responded. "And I know that we would love - or you would love — to see her sit down every single day with CNN and do interviews. But it’s that she’s a very busy person. She’s the vice president as well as a candidate."
Fallon also said Harris intended to do a lot of podcast and late-night interviews.
"I think we’ll mix in national press outlets. I think we’ll do a lot of, you know, digital-first sort of opportunities, podcasts, late night shows, daytime talk shows," Fallon said.
Hanna Panreck is an associate editor at Fox News.
