Kamala Harris is stepping up her media appearances with direct appeals to Black voters and other groups as she struggles to take on Donald Trump with just three weeks to go in the White House race.
On Tuesday Harris was interviewed by Charlamagne tha God, a radio host whose syndicated show is popular with young Black Americans. On Wednesday, Harris will sit down with Fox News presenter Bret Baier in her first appearance on Rupert Murdoch’s conservative cable channel, in a bid to reach centrists and anti-Trump Republicans.
The media blitz — which could also include a forthcoming interview on Joe Rogan’s controversial podcast — marks a gamble by Harris to reach a wider pool of voters amid concerns among top Democrats that she is losing momentum against Trump.
“This effort is aimed at people who haven’t decided to vote, or for whom to vote, and those are the people that matter,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, the centrist Democratic think-tank.
“It is definitely risky but I think it is smart,” Bennett added. “Charlamagne is risky. Bret Baier is risky. But taking risks is important at this stage. She can’t run like she’s ahead, because she is not.”
Harris has drawn criticism, including from Democrats, for being overly scripted in public. She defended her tactics to Charlamagne on Tuesday, saying: “That would be called discipline.”
“This is a margin-of-error race,” she said. “I’m gonna win, but it’s tight.”
Harris also said she needed to “earn every vote”, and laid out policies to help Black Americans in particular, including more support for small businesses and first-time homebuyers. She also reiterated her plan to decriminalise marijuana and said the there was “no question” that calls for reparations for descendants of slaves should be studied.
Reuters earlier reported that Harris’s campaign was also talking with Rogan about appearing on his podcast, which has huge reach with younger men. A spokesperson for Spotify, which distributes Rogan’s podcast, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The latest media push follows interviews last week on CBS’s flagship magazine show 60 Minutes, Howard Stern’s radio programme and Call Her Daddy, the sex and dating podcast popular with younger women.
With just three weeks left until November’s vote, Harris has few opportunities to shake up the presidential race, especially since Trump has declined invitations to a second debate with her.
“Without any big moments left on the docket, the Harris campaign must grab the attention of voters who don’t engage with political news,” Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to then-president Barack Obama, wrote on Substack.
A Financial Times poll tracker shows Harris leading Trump by 2.6 percentage points nationally, but in a virtual dead heat in the pivotal swing states. A recent NBC News poll showed her popularity had fallen in the past month.
“The theme of the past week has been that the ‘vibes’ seem to be getting worse for Kamala Harris and better for Donald Trump,” wrote non-partisan analyst Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia Center for Politics on Tuesday.
The polling had also been slightly better for Trump in the past week, Kondik said, with voters rating the former president on issues such as the economy and immigration, and overlooking his often polarising rhetoric.
Harris is making more swing state appearances after high-profile Democrats, including Obama’s chief campaign strategist David Axelrod, suggested she was spending too much time in meetings and not enough time on the road.
The Democratic candidate will hold nearly a dozen campaign events in four swing states this week.
At a rally in Pennsylvania on Monday, she unveiled a new attack line on Trump, homing in on his comments suggesting he would mobilise the military against the “enemy from within”.
“We have some sick people, radical left lunatics,” Trump told Fox News on Sunday. “And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by [the] National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”
“This is among the reasons I believe so strongly that a second Trump term would be a huge risk for America and dangerous,” Harris said.
Harris has until now shied away from focusing on Trump’s rhetoric. But allies said she needed to sharpen those attacks, too.
“A few months ago, she had to reintroduce herself to the public . . . now we are into the contrast phase,” said Bennett at Third Way. “The most important contrast is: do you believe in American democracy, or not?”
Additional reporting by Anna Nicolaou in New York
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