(Julianna Frieman, Headline USA) Harris campaign staffers blamed the media and its “dumb” questions for Vice President Kamala Harris’s defeat by President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday’s episode of Pod Save America.
Podcast host and former Obama staffer Dan Pfeiffer sat down with three core members of Harris’s team, including campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, who bemoaned Harris’s 107-day-short campaign caused by President Joe Biden’s abrupt withdraw in July.
“I am not a media hater by any measure, and I think that, you know, we women don’t get far in life talking about double standards, so that’s not the point. But I do think a narrative—107 days, two weeks f**ked up because of a hurricane. Two weeks talking about how she didn’t do interviews,” O’Malley Dillon said, flanked by Harris campaign staffers David Plouffe, Quentin Fulks and Stephanie Cutter.
Harris campaign staffers blame the media and its “dumb” questions for Kamala’s defeat to President-elect Donald Trump.
O’MALLEY DILLON: “Real people heard, in some way, that we were not going to have interviews, which was both not true and also, so counter to any kind of… pic.twitter.com/sFF8kKxUa6
— Julianna Frieman (@JuliannaFrieman) November 26, 2024
O’Malley Dillon told Pfeiffer that the Harris campaign had to balance Harris becoming the Democrat nominee with selecting her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and executing a rollout.
Harris did not hold her first sit-down interview until 39 days after she was endorsed by Biden, and she sat beside Walz as the pair were peppered by softball questions by CNN’s Dana Bash.
“People heard in some ways that we were not going to have interviews, which was both not true, and also, so counter to any kind of standard that was put on Trump that I think it was a problem,” O’Malley Dillon said.
The Harris campaign chairwoman complained about the media’s questions toward the failed Democrat nominee, which she described as unfair.
“The questions were small, and process-y, and about, like—” O’Malley Dillon began before Cutter called the questions “dumb.”
O’Malley Dillon said the questions Harris was asked did not inform voters or help them understand the vice president as a presidential hopeful.
“I’m not here to say that the whole system was focused on us incorrectly,” she said. “I’m just saying, like, again, of the things we need to explore as we move forward as campaign and as a country.”
O’Malley Dillon lamented the Harris campaign falling short on leveraging podcasts early on.
Trump appeared on dozens of podcasts throughout the duration of Harris’s entire campaign, but most notably, his three-hour-long conversation with popular host Joe Rogan received millions of views instantly.
“We had a limited amount of time to try to reach the people we were trying to reach and to go to them, but being up against a narrative that we weren’t doing anything or we were afraid to have interviews… it is completely bulls**t,” O’Malley Dillon raged.
Julianna Frieman is a freelance writer published by the Daily Caller, Headline USA, The Federalist, and The American Spectator. Follow her on Twitter at @JuliannaFrieman.
