Former president Donald Trump told the truth recently when he said he is engaging with journalists more than Vice President Kamala Harris. Perry Bacon Jr. in The Washington Post, August 18, 2024, observes that in her campaign Harris is giving the same speech over and over and not soliciting questions from voters or allowing journalists to ask questions about policy.
Jon Allsop of the Columbia Journalism Review, August 12, 2024, assesses Harris’ practices and Trump’s response and notes, “I agree with [those who] have argued that the Democratic ticket should do more interviews and press conferences, because these remain the best forum we have for stress-testing candidates’ positions and holding them to account. And if access demands can sometimes come across as performative, the world of professionalized politics, with its fetishization of message discipline, is vastly more so.”