Chuck Todd Highlights Kamala Harris’ 'First Big Mistake’ Weeks Into Her Presidential Campaign

Kamala Harris may be riding high on the waves of popularity but Chuck Todd warns her not to make this mistake which, according to him, could hurt her presidential campaign. Apparently, NBC News chief political analyst highlighted the "first big mistake" of taking too long to give her first official interview. After lying low for nearly 40 days into her nomination Harris agreed to do a sit-down. 

Todd weighed in on NBC News Now, "I think the easiest way to diffuse this is to go everywhere… doing local interviews, doing a podcast here, she can go to friendly places, go to unfriendly places. The idea when you sort of try to be, you know, laser-focused like this… we're going to gravitate to the big event. If there are six interviews, we're all overwhelmed… Everything gets diluted," as per Fox News. 

He further added that this reluctance (so to speak), to be selective in facing the media, could portray her in a negative light. "So I really think it only sort of reinforces this negative stereotype that she's a little- takes too long. There's a fine line between being deliberative and being paralyzed by a decision, but the way they've handled it, I think, is a bit- it's been a mistake." 

Prior to Harris sitting down with CNN for her first-ever interview after securing the Democratic nomination on August 29, 2024, she had been criticized for avoiding the journalists. In the three weeks that POTUS Joe Biden abandoned his re-election bid and passed the torch to his running mate, she (un)intentionally dodged many unscripted settings to interact with the American press. 

When she was confronted with the question, Harris said she'd like to go through the Democratic National Convention (DNC) first. "I want us to get an interview scheduled before the end of the month," she briefly responded and before the media could ask more, her aides signaled them that the time of the Q&A session was over for the day, as per The New York Times. 

Meanwhile, Todd shared his observation of how her Republican rival Donald Trump approached media interaction for his 2016 campaign. "The 2016 version [of Trump] he did interviews all over the place. Left, right, and center, friendly interviews, adversarial interviews, he'd do three or four in a day. In some ways, he preferred that than actually campaigning on the trail." 

"But what he successfully did is he never made one interview matter, right? It ends up diluting. So just the way they've handled this, and I just think they're now just playing into her perceived weakness," adding that any "fumble now is going to get overly scrutinized, unnecessarily so," Todd concluded. The former prosecutor sat down only once for a joint interview alongside her running mate Tim Walz with CNN's Dana Bash since earning her presidential nomination in the DNC.