Kamala Harris launches media blitz while Donald Trump snubs ‘60 Minutes’

Presidential candidate interviews on the 60 Minutes television news show are almost as ingrained in American electoral tradition as the debates, and have been so ever since the Republican Richard Nixon and the Democrat Hubert Humphrey sat down before CBS reporters in 1968. This year, however, Donald Trump snubbed the network after initially agreeing to the interview. Kamala Harris did sit down for an interview with the news program. The Democratic candidate, who took 39 days to respond face-to-face to a media outlet after she was appointed to replace Joe Biden, has launched a media blitz to reach out to voters. On Monday, Harris said she would not sit down with Vladimir Putin to negotiate peace in Ukraine without representation from the Kyiv government. She also said that she not only has a gun, but that she has fired it.

In addition to Monday’s interview, Harris gave another interview to the podcast Call Her Daddy, one of the most popular in the United States, which aired on Sunday. For Tuesday she has scheduled appearances on ABC’s The View and CBS’ The Late Show. In addition, she will participate in a Univision forum aimed at Latino voters on Thursday in Las Vegas. Her vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz, appeared briefly on the CBS interview on Monday and has also scheduled an appearance on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!. What Harris has not done so far is give a news conference, as part of a peculiar media strategy that has tried to minimize the possibilities of a slip-up that could cost her votes. With the interviews, she is taking some controlled risks due to the need to fight for every vote in a very close battle.

Monday’s 60 Minutes program began with an explanation from the host about the fact that Trump had backed out after agreeing to do the interview, citing various reasons, including that he refused to submit to fact-checking. Trump did appear on the conservative host Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, where he said he knew how tough Gaza was because he had been there, which turned out not to be true. In that interview, he persisted in his xenophobic messages, linking immigration and crime and claiming that the arrival of immigrants had brought “bad genes” to the United States. His campaign later said he was referring to criminals, not immigrants in general.

“How about allowing people to come through an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers? Many of them murdered far more than one person,” Trump said. “And they’re now happily living in the United States. You know, now a murderer — I believe this: it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.” The statistics Trump cited are for immigrants who have entered the United States over decades, including during his own administration. Trump has spoken in the past about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of America, a phrase with echoes of Adolf Hitler. White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre criticized Trump for his statement on Monday: “That kind of language is hateful, disgusting, inappropriate and has no place in our country,” she said at a news conference.

CBS anchor Bill Whitaker asked Harris about Trump’s refusal to grant an interview to 60 Minutes. “If he is not gonna give your viewers the ability to have a meaningful, thoughtful conversation, question and answer with you, then watch his rallies. You’re gonna hear conversations that are about himself and all of his personal grievances. And what you will not hear is anything about you, the listener. You will not hear about how he is gonna try to bring the country together, find common ground. And, Bill, that is why I believe in my soul and heart, the American people are ready to turn the page,” she replied.

Harris won her 30 minutes on the CBS show and passed the test with relative ease, although the interviewer put her on the spot by pointing out some of her contradictions and the delay in approving effective measures against the flood of undocumented immigrants. Harris did not deviate from her usual script when talking about Israel. She proclaimed what she calls Israel’s right to defend itself and assured that Washington is making a continuous effort to make clear its principles to Israel and the need for the war to end. “We are not gonna stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end,” she said.

The war in Ukraine

The interviewer asked her if she would sit down to negotiate a solution to the war in Ukraine with Putin. “Not bilaterally without Ukraine, no. Ukraine must have a say in the future of Ukraine,” she replied. And then she criticised her rival in the elections: “Donald Trump, if he were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now. He talks about, ‘Oh, he can end it on day one.’ You know what that is? It’s about surrender.”

On her shifting positions on issues such as shale oil extraction through hydraulic fracturing (fracking), public health insurance for all, or toughness at the border, Harris explained: “I believe in building consensus. We are a diverse people. Geographically, regionally, in terms of where we are in our backgrounds. And what the American people do want is that we have leaders who can build consensus. Where we can figure out compromise and understand it’s not a bad thing, as long as you don’t compromise your values, to find common-sense solutions. And that has been my approach.”

On the border in particular, she attacked her adversary by recalling that he torpedoed a bipartisan agreement in the Senate to approve a border security law. “Donald Trump got word that this bill was afoot and could be passed and he wants to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem, so he told his buddies in Congress, “Kill the bill. Don’t let it move forward.’”

Harris took the opportunity to try to send the message that she is a unifying figure, in contrast to Trump: “I believe that the people of America want a leader who’s not tryin’ to divide us and demean. I believe that the American people recognize that the true measure of the strength of a leader is not based on who you beat down, it’s based on who you lift up.”

She also provided some more details about the firearm she owns, which she has talked about several times over the past month to try to convince voters that she is not opposed to them. Harris said she has owned a Glock pistol “for quite some time,” and when asked if she had used it, she laughed and replied: “Yes. Of course I have. At a shooting range. Yes, of course I have.”

Harris defended her economic proposals, again dropping her “I am a capitalist,” and her intention to make the wealthiest individuals and companies pay more taxes.

In her Call Her Daddy podcast interview on Sunday, Harris said she felt “sorry” for Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who suggested last month that the vice president has nothing to keep her humble because she has no biological children. “I don’t think she understands that there are a whole lot of women out here who, one, are not aspiring to be humble,” Harris said of Sanders. “Two, a whole lot of women out here who have a lot of love in their life, family in their life and children in their life, and I think it’s really important for women to lift each other up.”

“We have our family by blood, and then we have our family by love, and I have both. And I consider it a real blessing and I have two beautiful children, Cole and Ella, who call me Momala. We have a very modern family,“ she said. “Family comes in many forms and I think that increasingly, all of us understand that this is not the 1950s anymore.”

The lies about the hurricane

Before leaving for New York on Monday, the U.S. vice president criticised Trump for the lies he has spread about relief aid in the wake of Hurricane Helene. Trump has baselessly claimed that the federal government is intentionally withholding aid from Republican victims of the disaster and has also lied by saying that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had run out of money because it had been diverted to programs for undocumented immigrants.

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