‘What a stupid question’: Donald Trump and Kamala Harris both criticised for campaign strategies
Kamala Harris has been Donald Trump’s opponent for almost three weeks, and something is conspicuously absent from her campaign.
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America’s presidential candidates are both being criticised more and more for their style of campaigning, albeit for different reasons, with just under 90 days left until the election.
Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, has been blitzing key swing states this week alongside her newly announced pick for the vice presidency, Tim Walz. Each day her schedule involves multiple speeches to large, excited crowds of her supporters.
And that’s working for her, it seems, with polls now indicating she may even be a slight favourite to beat the Republican nominee, former president Donald Trump.
But one thing is conspicuously absent from her campaign: scrutiny.
Ms Harris has not sat down for a single interview since she took over from President Joe Biden upon his withdrawal from the race last month. She is not subjecting herself to press conferences with journalists. At best, Ms Harris has fielded a handful of questions on the tarmac before boarding Air Force Two.
Speaking to adoring crowds is all well and good, but at some point, Ms Harris is going to have to subject herself to tough questions. She seems to be avoiding them.
“This is a person who has been a presumptive Democrat nominee for 16 days. She hasn’t taken a single real question from a reporter,” the Republican vice presidential nominee, J.D. Vance, said this week.
“The American people deserve to get to know the people who want to lead them, and I think it’s shameful for Kamala Harris, but increasingly for the media, that she is taking a basement strategy of running from reporters instead of getting in front of them and answering tough questions about her record and letting the American people know who she is.”
Donald Trump, the sloth?
Mr Trump has something like the opposite problem.
While Ms Harris and Mr Walz have been crisscrossing the country this week, often visiting two or three states in the same day, Mr Trump has been holed up at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, barely appearing in public at all.
Before today, when Mr Trump hosted a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, he had spent day after day posting on social media from behind closed doors. On Wednesday, he phoned into one interview with Fox News morning show, Fox & Friends. And that was it.
On Friday, US time, he is scheduled to visit Montana, a solid Republican state. That will be his first interstate trip of the week.
So, one lone campaign event outside his personal residence, in an entire week. That is a remarkably low level of effort for a presidential candidate – far below even that of Mr Biden in 2020, when Mr Trump accused him of campaigning “from his basement”.
Meanwhile Mr Vance has been campaigning as normal, travelling at a rate comparable to the Democrats.
And unlike Mr Walz, who’s had Ms Harris at his side throughout the week, Mr Vance has been left to campaign on his own.
‘What a stupid question’
Mr Trump did, at least, subject himself to questions from journalists today, holding a media conference in one of his home’s ballrooms. He was asked about his light schedule.
“You have not had a public campaign event for nearly a week now,” the reporter said. “Tomorrow you’ll be in Montana, which is not a swing state. Some of your allies have expressed concern that you are not taking this race seriously …”
“What a stupid question this is,” Mr Trump interjected.
“ … particularly when there is enthusiasm on the other side,” the reporter continued. “Why haven’t you been campaigning this week?”
“Because I’m leading by a lot, and because I’m letting their convention go through,” the former president said.
The Democratic National Convention, which will involve four days of televised speeches by leading Democrats, runs from August 19-22.
“I’m campaigning a lot. I’m doing tremendous amounts of taping here. We have commercials at a level I don’t think anybody has ever done before,” Mr Trump continued.
“Plus, in many cases, I see many of you in the room, I’m speaking to you on phones, I’m speaking to radio, I’m speaking to television. Television’s coming over here. Excuse me, what are we doing right now?
“She’s not doing any news conferences. You know why? Because she can’t do a news conference. She doesn’t know how to do a news conference. She’s not smart enough to do a news conference. And I’m sorry, we need smart people to lead this country.”
The reporter asked whether Mr Trump would be “picking up” his level of travel.
“No, after their convention, yeah,” he replied.
“Actually I’m going out to certain places to help certain senators get elected, not even for me. I don’t have to go there because I’m leading those states by record levels. I’m going because I want to help senators and congressmen get elected.”
Kamala Harris, the meek?
Ms Harris, perhaps conscious of the mounting accusations that she’s been dodging questions, approached reporters on the tarmac later in the day, saying: “Whatcha got?”
“Can you comment on some of his criticisms? He made a whole litany of them today …,” a reporter started to ask.
“I was too busy talking to voters, I didn’t hear them,” Ms Harris told him.
She welcomed the news Mr Trump had agreed to debate her on September 10 (he had previously pulled out, citing the Democrats’ change of candidate and his ongoing legal action against one of the network’s hosts).
“I’m glad that he’s finally agreed to a debate on September 10. I’m looking forward to it, and I hope he shows up,” Ms Harris said.
She would not commit to any more debates, but said she was “happy to have that conversation about an additional debate” after the one on September 10.
Mr Trump has been trying to get her to agree to another debate before that, on September 4, on Fox News.
Ms Harris also indicated she would, at last, do a sit-down interview, though based on her answer, it could still be up to three weeks away.
“I’ve talked to my team. I want us to get an interview scheduled before the end of the month,” she said.
Other nagging questions
Back at Mar-a-Lago, the questions from journalists were not limited to Mr Trump’s schedule.
“How are you planning to vote on Florida’s abortion referendum?” he was asked.
Each state in the US sets its own abortion laws. In Florida, a ban from six weeks of pregnancy onwards took effect earlier this year – a point when many women don’t even know they are pregnant.
If the referendum passes, a protection for abortion rights up until the point of foetal viability, at about 24 weeks of pregnancy, will be enshrined in law.
That referendum is happening in conjunction with the election on November 5. As a resident of Florida, Mr Trump gets a vote in it.
“Well I’m going to announce that. I’m going to actually have a press conference on that at some point in the near future,” Mr Trump answered.
“So I don’t want to tell you now.”
Abortion is an awkward issue for the former president, given his appointment of the three conservative Supreme Court justices during his first term. Those justices went on to overturn Roe vs Wade, the landmark ruling that had underpinned US abortion rights for 50 years.
Since then, Republican-run states have imposed strict abortion bans across much of the country. Mr Trump is stuck between taking credit for something his conservative base loves and trying to avoid blame for the very same thing, given most Americans disapprove.
Mr Trump was also asked about his comments at an event last Wednesday, alleging (falsely, for what it’s worth) that Ms Harris only recently started to identify as black.
The Vice President’s parents were from Jamaica and India; she herself was born in the US.
“How is she only recently deciding to be black?” a reporter asked.
“Well you’ll have to ask her that question, because she’s the one that said it. I didn’t say it,” Mr Trump replied.
“To me it doesn’t matter. But to her, from her standpoint, I think it’s very disrespectful to both, really, whether it’s Indian or black.”
The former president repeatedly brought up the size of his rally crowds, apparently annoyed at media reporting on the large crowds being drawn by Ms Harris.
“I’ve spoken to the biggest crowds. No one has spoken to crowds bigger than me,” he said.
“If you look at Martin Luther King, when he did his speech, his great speech. And you look at ours. Same real estate, same everything. Same number of people, if not we had more. And they said he had a million people, I had 25,000.
“You look at the pictures of his crowd, my crowd, we actually had more people.”
Mr Trump was specifically talking about his crowd at the “Stop the Steal” rally, held at the Ellipse in front of the White House just before the Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021.
Estimates put that gathering at about 10,000 people. There were an estimated 250,000 people for Dr King’s famous speech in 1963, delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
‘Very good, very normal’: Harris campaign responds
The Harris campaign issued a lengthy statement sarcastically responding to, in its words, “Donald Trump’s very good, very normal press conference”.
It characterised the election as a choice between “joy and freedom”, on one side, and “whatever the hell that was” on the other.
“Donald Trump took a break from taking a break to put on some pants and host a public meltdown. We have a lot to say about it,” the campaign said.
“He hasn’t campaigned all week. He isn’t going to a single swing state this week. But he sure is mad Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are getting big crowds across the battlegrounds.
“The facts were hard to track and harder to find in Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago meltdown this afternoon. He lied. He attacked the media. He made excuses.”
The statement proceeded to list, line by line, some of the alleged problems with Mr Trump’s performance. The worst one, according to the Harris campaign, was his refusal to say how he will vote in the aforementioned abortion referendum in Florida.
Originally published as ‘What a stupid question’: Donald Trump and Kamala Harris both criticised for campaign strategies
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