According to a campaign official, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will remain in the spotlight even if Vice President Harris opts out of two proposed debates. The official noted, “We’ll do town halls” if Harris does not participate. As the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Harris has only formally committed to a debate scheduled for September 10 on ABC.
The New York Post reported that “the former president said during this week’s news conference at Mar-a-Lago that he agreed to a Sept. 4 debate on Fox News and a Sept. 25 debate on NBC.” And while Harris left the door open to do the NBC debate, she doesn’t appear likely to participate in the Fox event. “Well, I’m glad that he’s finally agreed to a debate on Sept. 10,” she said Thursday. “I am happy to have that conversation about an additional debate, or after Sept. 10, for sure.”
That said, Harris is obviously being shielded by her campaign advisers, likely due to her history of verbal gaffes and cackling when she doesn’t know how to respond. She has yet to hold a formal press conference more than three weeks after she became the de facto Democratic nominee when President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and essentially anointed her his successor. Said GOP strategist Matt Wolking in a statement to The Post: “Right now they feel like it’s safer to keep her in a bubble and let the establishment media do her work for her.”
Trump’s campaign is well aware that Harris hasn’t bothered to hold a serious press conference, so officials have come up with a plan to force her into the open, so to speak. The campaign plans to put pressure on Harris begins with deploying Senator J.D. Vance to trail her on the campaign circuit, according to sources close to the Daily Caller. While Trump has been active with media appearances and interviews recently, Vance’s role will be to contrast his policies with Harris’s and spotlight her tendency to avoid the media.
“To highlight that, Senator Vance and President Trump are showing up where Kamala Harris is not,” a campaign spokesperson, granted anonymity to preview strategy, told the Caller. The spokesperson highlighted that Trump attended the National Association of Black Journalists conference while Harris did not. Trump has also made appearances with non-traditional media personalities, such as streamer Adin Ross and Elon Musk.
“Senator Vance is doing the same by going to the same places that Kamala Harris is going but refusing to take questions. Anyone can show up in a state and read off of a script, off a teleprompter, and then leave 20 minutes later, that’s exactly what Joe Biden was doing, and it didn’t work for him. We’re not going to let it work,” the spokesperson continued.
On Thursday, Harris took a couple of questions from reporters on the tarmac for the first time during her campaign. While she did not address the significant shifts in her policy positions since her 2020 presidential bid, she stated her goal of arranging at least one media interview by the end of the month. She added that she was “open” to the idea of additional debates with Trump, who said at a press conference earlier in the day that he had agreed to three.
The Trump campaign’s strategy was evident on Wednesday when Vance arrived in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. As he disembarked and walked towards Air Force Two on the tarmac, Harris had already departed, leaving reporters waiting. “I wanted to take a good look at the plane because, hopefully, it’s going to be my plane in a few months, but I also thought you guys might get lonely because the Vice President doesn’t answer questions from reporters and hasn’t for 17 days,” Vance told the journalists.
Disclaimer: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.