Mark Penn, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton, said Monday that Vice President Kamala Harris's shunning of the media and participating in only one presidential debate is undemocratic.
Harris has not given a single interview or press conference since launching her campaign in July, but the campaign Website Harris did not list any policies, only agreeing to a debate on ABC News on Sept. 10. Penn said on “America's Newsroom” that Harris' campaign strategy will leave voters uninformed and prevent a true democratic process from taking place in the presidential election. (Related article: “Kamala was in on it too”: Pro-Trump PAC pulls anti-Kamala Harris ad within two hours of Biden's departure)
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'It's not democratic': Ex-Clinton adviser says it's 'unacceptable' for Harris to shun media, debates pic.twitter.com/bi1YkhNXG4
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 26, 2024
“I don't know what interviews people have done over the last few days that will be meaningful going into Labor Day weekend,” Penn said. “Maybe it'll all be online, but I don't think it's acceptable for candidates to debate at this time. In my opinion, we should have three presidential debates instead of one. We should have position statements on our websites, not donation pages. And we should go before the press every two or three days. Because if voters are uninformed, it's not a democracy with a real vote.”
Harris won the Democratic nomination in July despite President Joe Biden garnering little support in the primary.
Radio host Charlaman the God said Monday that Harris has come under increased scrutiny due to the process that led to her nomination and the resulting short duration of her presidential campaign.
“She didn't give interviews for three weeks. You know why everyone made a big fuss about that? Because she only had 90-plus days to win,” Charmagne said. “Now she has 70-plus days to win. She's going to be under even more scrutiny because of the nature of her campaign and how she became a candidate.”
NewsNation host Chris Cuomo said on his podcast Thursday that the vice president is avoiding the press because he's in a more vulnerable position than previous Democratic presidential candidates.
“They don't want her in front of the media, and that tells us something. They don't want her in front of the media because they think there's a risk,” Cuomo said. “They wouldn't have done it with Bill Clinton, they wouldn't have done it with Hillary Clinton, they wouldn't have done it with Barack Obama, because they didn't think there was a risk in having that person as speaker. So they do see a risk here.”
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