WASHINGTON (AP) – Vice President Kamala Harris is set to conduct a rare extended campaign interview Tuesday, taking questions from reporters at the National Association of Black Journalists just a month after former President Donald Trump appeared before the same organization. disputes about race and other issues.
Trump’s interview opened a chapter in a campaign in which the Republican nominee repeatedly questioned Harris’ racial identity, claiming, without merit, that he had only belatedly “turned black” at some point in his professional career. Trump has since repeatedly questioned Harris’ racial identity on the campaign trail and in September’s presidential debate
Harris, the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, has repeatedly dismissed Trump’s statements as “the same old show.” In a conversation with Trump in September, he said it was a “tragedy” that he had “tried to use race to divide the American people.”
Trump, his running mate Ohio Sen. JD Vance and other Republicans have criticized Harris for largely avoiding media interviews or interacting with reporters covering his campaign events. He and his running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, gave a joint interview to CNN last month. His campaign recently said he plans to do more local media, and last week he participated in his first television interview since becoming the Democratic nominee, taking questions from a Philadelphia station.
During Trump’s interview with NABJ, he apologized to the moderators and at times received applause and gasps from the audience. The interview also sparked discussion at the NABJ convention itself, which functions both as a networking and community space for black media professionals and as a news event.
PolitiFact, a fact-checking news organization, is providing live fact-checking of the Harris interview, as it did for Trump’s NABJ appearance. As with Trump’s appearance, the audience is comprised of NABJ members and college students.
Harris has largely sidelined traditional media appearances, focusing instead on rallies, grassroots organizing and social media, where the vice president can deflect questions from independent reporters about his policies and agenda.
Tuesday’s event was moderated by Eugene Daniels of Politico, Gerren Gaynor of TheGrio and Tonya Mosley of WHYY, the Philadelphia-area public radio station that hosted the gathering.
The NABJ noted the importance of hosting the debate in Philadelphia, a large city in a battleground state with a large black population. Philadelphia was also home to one of NABJ’s most important precursor organizations.
For years, the association has invited both major presidential candidates to address the convention. Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden all attended NABJ events as presidential candidates or while in office.
