Vice President Kamala Harris is making a push to reach key voters ahead of the November 5 election with a media blitz of television and podcast appearances, including on Call Her Daddy and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
Plans include a visit to New York on Tuesday for appearances on ABC’s The View, The Howard Stern Show and Colbert’s show on CBS, a senior campaign official said.
On the Call Her Daddy episode, released Sunday, Harris underscored her support for abortion rights and pledged to “continue to fight for student debt relief.” Her appearance on the podcast reflects the importance of connecting with younger audiences who will be key to the election outcome, according to her campaign.
Call Her Daddy and The View have large female audiences, a voter bloc that favors Harris over former President Donald Trump in polls ahead of the presidential election.
Harris was viewed very or somewhat favorably by 51% of female likely voters in the latest Bloomberg/Morning Consult swing-state poll, while 44% held those views about Trump.
Harris’s media campaign follows needling by Republicans, including presidential nominee Trump and running mate JD Vance, that the vice president has shied away from interviews.
In a preview from an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes airing Monday, Harris said the US won’t stop pressure on Israel and “Arab leaders” for a cease-fire deal that also frees hostages taken by Hamas in the group’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
CBS has said that Trump’s campaign backed out of a 60 Minutes sitdown after both candidates initially agreed to interviews with the network.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz kicked off a media push on Sunday with a Fox News interview that included questions about his history of misspeaking and flubbed statements on the campaign trail that Republicans have capitalized on.
Walz redirected criticism about his comments backing access to in vitro fertilization — his wife said she received intrauterine insemination, not IVF — to Trump.
“I don’t think people care whether I used IUI or IVF when we talk about this,” Walz said on Fox News Sunday. “What they understand is Donald Trump would resist those things.”
During last week’s vice presidential debate with Vance, Walz said he “misspoke” when saying he was in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing — and added he’s “a knucklehead at times.”
“I will own up when I misspeak,” Walz, who’s in his second term as governor of Minnesota, said Sunday. “I will own up when I make a mistake.”
On Monday, Walz is scheduled to appear on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live. A senior campaign official said he’ll also appear on a major US podcast, but didn’t specify which.
Harris and Walz will visit critical Sun Belt states later in the week. Harris is participating in a Univision town hall on October 10 in Nevada, an attempt to court the Latino voting bloc that the campaign has struggled to grasp as firmly as previous Democratic candidates.
Both will visit swing state Arizona, where early voting begins October 9.