Delay of Harris interview ‘feeds’ Trump’s ‘attack’

MSNBC Analyst Basil Smikle argued that by delaying a “sit-down” press interview, Vice President Kamala Harris “feeds” the former president Donald Trump's “Line of attack” that she is “not smart enough” and “avoids the problems”.

Harris told reporters in Detroit three weeks ago that she had asked her team to schedule an interview by the end of the month. But as August draws to a close and no interview has been scheduled, Trump is using the issue as a means to undermine his opponent's credibility.

Tuesdays Ana Cabrera reportshost José Diaz-Balart presented a new Trump campaign email sent that morning criticizing Harris for not giving an interview in the 37 days since she took office as president Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate. Diaz-Balart added that Harris did indeed “answer questions from the press, but not in a long, televised session.”

He then asked his Smikle if he thought the interview would be relevant “for other journalists.” Smikle, who was on the panel, replied:

I think it's important for some voters, but Vice President Harris has to be very single-minded in what she does. The biggest task she has to face over the next 70 days is to maintain the momentum and gain the trust of the voters. She has to maintain that. She has to do that with tremendous single-mindedness. But I also recognize that this line of attack from Donald Trump, that she has not participated in this debate so far, is part of this larger strategy to sow doubt.

If you think about the press conference where he talked about the debate, he also said that Vice President Kamala Harris didn't want to debate him and that she wasn't smart. So all of that is kind of part of a larger line of attack where he and Republicans would say that she's not good at this, that she's not smart enough, that's why she's dodging the issues and avoiding him. That's clearly not the case, but it's part of his larger strategy to stoke these kinds of doubts and attacks against her.

Watch above on MSNBC.

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