Harris, Walz to hold first joint network TV interview on CNN

[August 29, 2024]  SAVANNAH, Georgia (Reuters) - Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will sit on Thursday for their first joint television interview since they accepted their nominations as the Democratic presidential and vice presidential candidates.

Harris has taken questions from journalists on the campaign trail and been interviewed on TikTok in recent days.

But she has yet to do a one-on-one interview with a major network or print journalist or hold a formal press conference since she ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket, after President Joe Biden was forced to end his re-election campaign on July 21.

CNN's Dana Bash, who co-anchored Biden's June 27 debate against Republican candidate Donald Trump, will conduct the interview in Savannah, Georgia, as Harris continues her bus tour of the battleground state. The interview will air at 9 p.m. EDT (0100 GMT Friday), with CNN set to release short excerpts before it airs.

Before Harris picked him as her running mate for the Nov. 5 election, Walz did a string of interviews with major television networks.

Harris and Walz on Tuesday kicked off a bus tour of Georgia, piling into a big blue bus emblazoned with the words "A New Way Forward" as they worked to woo voters in a state Biden narrowly won in 2020, and which could play a decisive role in this year's election.

Harris, joined by representative Nikema Williams, will make two stops at small businesses and thank volunteers in Chatham County, Georgia, where Democrats have chalked up steady gains in recent years.

At around 5:15 p.m. EDT, she is due to speak at a campaign rally in Savannah's Enmarket Arena, making her the first presidential candidate to campaign in Savannah since the 1990s.

She will be introduced by Katelyn Green, president of student government at Savannah State University, the oldest historically Black college and university in the state.

The campaign is reaching out to students across battleground states which could be decisive in November to help boost turnout, but it also faces possible protests by pro-Palestinian voices angered by U.S. arms sales to Israel. One protest by the group Savannah for Palestine is scheduled to begin at 2 p.m., organizers said.

Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and vice presidential nominee Tim Walz walk down the steps from Air Force Two at Savannah/ Hilton Head International Airport in Savannah, Georgia, U.S., August 28, 2024. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz/File Photo

OFF-SCRIPT MOMENTS

Harris' lack of interviews has sparked criticism from opponents, and some concern among supporters, that she is less sharp at off-script moments than she is at rallies or speeches where a prepared speech and a TelePrompter are at her disposal.

Trump frequently holds press conferences and offers interviews to conservative news outlets. Often he uses them to criticize Harris and Biden rather than discuss his own policy aims in detail.

The CNN interview will be watched both for how Harris handles a less scripted environment and for any new details about her policies and goals for a presidency, should she win.

Early in her vice presidential tenure, Harris was criticized for her response in an interview with NBC anchor Lester Holt, who asked why she had not yet visited the U.S. border with Mexico. She said she had not yet been to Europe, either.

The Harris-Walz campaign held traditional journalists at arms length during the Democratic National Convention last week in Chicago while granting hundreds of social media influencers more access to officials.

Last week, Harris was interviewed by Track Star Show, a TikTok account with over 380,000 followers, about her love of musicians Stevie Wonder and Miles Davis.

A video on the campaign's YouTube channel of Harris and Walz discussing his taco preferences, division in America, social programs they both support and their mutual appreciation for musician Prince - a Minnesota native - has been watched more than 1.8 million times.

(Writing by Steve Holland, Jeff Mason and Andrea Shalal; Editing by Heather Timmons)

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