The Harris campaign seems to be in a total freefall and Politico is trying to ride to her rescue. Currently, Harris leads by 2.6 points in national polling. This number reflects a slow but steady deterioration of her position since the Democrat convention. By contrast, at this point in 2020, Joe Biden held a 10.7-point lead over Donald Trump before eking out a questionable 4.5-point win. Inside that number, things are even more grim. The only people still calling Arizona and Georgia “battleground” states are hardcore Democrat partisans. Trump is in a much stronger position in North Carolina than he was in 2020. Today, Trump is ahead by 0.9 points. In 2020, Trump trailed Biden by 3.2 points before winning the state by 1.1 points.
The final result will come down to one of three states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In all three of those, the polls put Trump in a much stronger position than 2020. Trump is down by 0.5 points in Michigan. In 2020, he was down by 7.9 points and lost by 2.8 points. In Pennsylvania, Trump trails Harris by 0.2 points. Biden led by 4.7 in 2020 before “winning” by 1.2 points. Finally, Harris landed Trump tied in Wisconsin, where in 2020 Biden let by 7.7 before the air went out of the balloon, and he squeaked out a 0.6-point win thanks to creative rulemaking and counting. If history holds, Trump will win all three of those states.
Somehow, Politico has decided that this is due to Trump’s media blackout. I’m not making that up; that’s the headline: Playbook: Trump’s media backout – POLITICO. This is sort of funny because back in September, Politico was talking about the wisdom of Kamala’s refusal to do interviews.
Ever since Biden passed Harris the baton, news organizations have been pushing the vice president’s team for a sit-down interview. According to two people familiar with the campaign’s thinking, there are ongoing discussions about a joint interview with Harris and Walz prior to the convention, which begins on Aug. 19 in Chicago. But on the whole, Harris’ top communications aides are deeply skeptical, as Biden’s inner circle was, that doing big interviews with major TV networks or national newspapers offer much real upside when it comes to reaching swing voters.
One longtime Harris ally suggested to West Wing Playbook that Harris could hold off on big interviews until after Labor Day. “There’s really no need,” the person said. “The voters that she needs are at the local level. They’re not reading the national press.”
Walz, whose viral cable TV appearances helped propel him onto the ticket, could be deployed on television more liberally than Harris in the coming months, the two people said. But it’s also quite possible both candidates will focus much of their media outreach on podcasts, influencers and other platforms outside the traditional news media.
So far, Harris’ rally speeches, delivered via teleprompter, have been well received. And she has routinely interacted with the reporters that travel with her — but on her terms. She often visits with the press pool seated at the back of her plane (something Biden did just twice in more than three years), but speaking only off the record. And when she has chosen to comment on the record on something in the news, Harris has spoken to the pool on the tarmac, making statements but not taking questions.
“What is the incentive for her [to take more questions]?” said another person close to the campaign who was granted anonymity to share how Harris’ team views the matter. “She’s getting out exactly the message she wants to get out.”
This shows the deep bias within our political media and the endemic gaslighting they engage in. What Politico’s gripe seems to be is that Trump has basically ignored Harris-collaborating media.
NO SHADE — Recently, it’s become something of a pattern: Trump is scheduled for an interview with a neutral media outlet, the date nears and then … things fall apart.
It happened just this week to planned Trump sit-downs with NBC in Philadelphia and CNBC’s “Squawk Box” — and that’s on the heels of him backing out of a “60 Minutes” episode earlier this month.
Why does this keep happening? Playbook has learned that yet another outlet was given an explanation by Trump’s team for why their own interview wasn’t coming to fruition: exhaustion.
The Trump campaign had been in conversations for weeks with The Shade Room about a sit-down interview. The site, which draws an audience that is largely young and Black, hosted an interview with Harris just last week.
But as no interview materialized, Shade Room staff began feeling that feet were being dragged inside Trump’s campaign. No date was ever set, we’re told, but the intention was to try and work toward a sit-down.
In a conversation earlier this week, when describing why an interview hadn’t come together just yet, a Trump adviser told The Shade Room producers that Trump was “exhausted and refusing [some] interviews but that could change” at any time, according to two people familiar with the conversations.
To make up for a lack of a Trump interview this close to the election, those two people say Trump-supporting rapper WAKA FLOCKA FLAME was offered up as an alternative.
Trump’s national press secretary KAROLINE LEAVITT, while making clear she wasn’t part of the back and forth for The Shade Room interview, told Playbook last night that the idea that Trump was exhausted “is unequivocally false.”
“President Trump is running laps around Kamala Harris on the campaign trail,” Leavitt said. “And has done media interviews every day this week. He has more energy and a harder work ethic than anyone in politics.”
Trump’s team points out that he has constantly done interviews — which is fair, but we’d hasten to add that many of them are with friendly hosts or on friendly networks.
As for the one contentious interview he did this week, with Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait, Trump later complained that he was “hoodwinked to go on that. I was supposed to make a speech in front of the Chicago Economic Club, which is a big deal. It’s a very prestigious place, everything was beautiful. And all of a sudden I understand I’m being interviewed by this gentleman and he’s got a reputation.”
Trump has had anything but a “media blackout.” As of October 18, Trump has done 59 interviews compared to 26 for Kamala. He outscores her in every form of media.
Media appearances since becoming their party’s nominee for president:
Trump: 59
Kamala: 26 pic.twitter.com/Ms7jgDRSEI
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 18, 2024
So far in October, he’s held 28 rallies generating the much-vaunted “local coverage” that Kamala’s brain trust puts such high store in.
Trump’s schedule since Oct 1
✅28 in-person events
✅25 cities
✅12 states
✅21 interviews (including 7 long form podcasts)
✅Little sleep https://t.co/OPw5TzeYWA
— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) October 19, 2024
For someone Kamala claims is “exhausted,” Trump is not only not slowing down, he looks envigorated; see WATCH: Trump Tears Into Kamala Harris After She Calls Him ‘Exhausted,’ Points Out Some Inconvenient Facts.
This is a good visual of the media appearances for both parties over time. Clearly Trump isn’t slowing down. pic.twitter.com/QrDrIqWrnt
— Jeff Schvey (@jeff_schvey) October 18, 2024
Kamala’s dodging the press has become so obvious that even the mainstream press has noticed; see Kamala’s Taunt Backfires: TIME Rips Harris for Avoiding Interviews After She Claims Trump Is ‘Hiding.’
The real question is, why would any GOP candidate ever go on CBS again?
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Why would any GOP candidate ever again go on a network as craven and dishonest as ABC?
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Trump is doing anything but engaging in a ‘media blackout.’ He’s accessible and, unlike Kamala, he is able to talk policy and string a noun-verb-noun sentence together. What he is doing is engaging his base and persuadable voters. He’s not spending any time giving people who hate him the opportunity to define him. This is a lesson I hope all future GOP candidates take to heart.
