Kamala Harris is stepping up her media appearances and sharpening her attacks on Donald Trump amid concerns among top Democrats that she is losing momentum with just three weeks to go in the White House race.
On Tuesday evening she will be interviewed by Charlamagne tha God, a radio host known for direct questioning. On Wednesday, Harris will sit down with Fox News presenter Bret Baier in her first appearance on Rupert Murdoch’s conservative cable channel.
The media blitz — which could also include a forthcoming interview on Joe Rogan’s controversial podcast — marks a gamble by Harris as she tries to reach younger voters, Black voters and disaffected Republicans, said Democratic operatives.
“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.”
Reuters first reported that Harris’s campaign officials were in talks with Rogan about an appearance on his programme. A spokesperson for Spotify, which distributes Rogan’s podcast, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The latest media push follows a number of interviews last week ranging from CBS’s flagship magazine show 60 Minutes to Howard Stern’s radio programme to Call Her Daddy, the sex and dating podcast popular with younger female listeners.
Other Democratic strategists noted that the shrinking electoral calendar left Harris with few opportunities to shake up the presidential race, especially since Trump has declined invitations to participate in a second debate with the vice-president.
“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 this week 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 swing states that will decide the outcome of the November 5 election.
But several recent polls have included warning signs for Harris, including an NBC News poll last weekend showing 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 in a memo on Tuesday.
The polling had also been slightly better for Trump in the past week, Kondik said, with voters continuing to rate the former president on issues like the economy and immigration, and overlooking his bombastic and often polarising rhetoric.
Harris has also picked up the pace of her appearances in swing states after high-profile Democrats, including Obama’s chief campaign strategist David Axelrod, suggested the vice-president was spending too much time in internal meetings and not enough time on the road.
The Democratic candidate will hold nearly a dozen campaign events in four swing states this week, making two stops in Pennsylvania, three visits to Michigan, several stops in Wisconsin and a trip to Georgia.
At a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Monday, she unveiled a new line of attack, going after the former president for suggesting he would mobilise the military to go after 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.”
Harris said the crowd knew who Trump would target: “Journalists whose stories he doesn’t like, election officials who refuse to cheat by filling extra votes and finding extra votes for him, judges who insist on following the law instead of bending to his will.”
She added: “This is among the reasons I believe so strongly that a second Trump term would be a huge risk for America and dangerous.”
Unlike President Joe Biden, who made arguments about Trump’s threat to democracy central to what had been his re-election pitch, Harris has until now largely shied away from focusing on Trump’s rhetoric. But allies say it was now time 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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