Harris aides answer shots that she stuck with Biden and skirted interviews

Vice President Kamala Harris’ aides are reacting to two issues that might’ve hurt her campaign: how she didn’t want to distance herself from President Biden and dodged interviews.

When asked why Ms. Harris was unwilling to separate herself from Mr. Biden on specific issues, Stephanie Cutter, a senior adviser to the campaign, said she felt like she was “part of the administration.”

“So, why should she look back and cherry-pick some things that she would have done differently, when she was part of it?” Ms. Cutter said on “Pod Save America” on Tuesday. “And she also — she had tremendous loyalty to President Biden.”

Ms. Cutter said the most Ms. Harris felt comfortable saying was that vice presidents don’t typically break from their presidents, with the exception of former Vice President Mike Pence, who continues to slam President-elect Donald Trump after serving in his first term.

“She wasn’t willing to change that precedent for whoever the future president, vice presidential partnership would be because it would mean a whole different set of problems, as if we don’t have enough problems in our democracy right now,” Ms. Cutter said. “So unless we were willing to say, you know, Biden said green and she said blue on any particular issue where we’re never really going to satisfy that.”

Since the election, some have said one of Ms. Harris’ campaign downfalls was her lack of distance from Mr. Biden.

Harris campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, also on “Pod Save America,” argued that the notion that Ms. Harris was trying to dodge media interviews was “b———-.” While Mr. Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, sat down for constant interviews, Ms. Harris often ignored them.

“I think back and think we should have signaled more of our strategy early on about podcasts and who we were trying to reach and — but we had a limited amount of time to reach the people we were trying to reach and we were trying to go to them,” Ms. O’Malley Dillon said. “But being up against a narrative that we weren’t doing anything or we were afraid to have interviews is completely b———- and also like took hold a little bit and we just gave us another thing we had to fight back for that Trump never had to worry about.”

Ms. Harris’ campaign season was short since she jumped into the presidential race in July after Mr. Biden stepped down from the Democratic ticket.

Eventually she did more interviews, appearing on the podcasts “Call Her Daddy” and “All the Smoke.” Before those, her first interview was with her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, with CNN in late August.

“Real people heard in some way that we were not going to have interviews, which was both not true and also so counter to any kind of standard that was put on Trump that I think that was a problem,” Ms. O’Malley Dillon said.

Ms. Harris has been mostly quiet since her remarks after losing the election to Mr. Trump. Her aides and allies told Politico that she has vowed to stay “in the fight” and may consider a 2028 presidential run or even go for California governor in 2026.