Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to participate in an in-depth campaign interview on Tuesday, where she will take questions from a panel of journalists from the National Association of Black Journalists. This interview comes shortly after former President Donald Trump’s appearance before the same organization, during which contentious discussions around race and other issues took place.
During Trump’s interview, he made baseless claims about Harris’s racial identity, suggesting that she had only recently embraced her Black heritage. In response, Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian descent, dismissed Trump’s remarks as divisive and denounced his attempts to use race to divide the American people.
Criticism has been directed at Harris for her limited media interactions, with accusations of avoiding interviews with reporters covering her campaign events. Her campaign has recently signaled a shift towards engaging more with the media, including a joint interview with CNN and a solo television interview with a Philadelphia station.
The upcoming interview with Harris, moderated by journalists from Politico, theGrio, and WHYY, is a significant event being hosted in Philadelphia, a key city in a battleground state with a substantial Black population. The National Association of Black Journalists has a history of inviting presidential candidates to speak at their convention, with past attendees including Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.
The interview with Harris will be subject to live fact-checking by PolitiFact, similar to the scrutiny faced by Trump during his appearance at the NABJ event. The format of the interview will involve questions from NABJ members and college students, aiming to provide a platform for informed discussion and engagement with important issues.