In first interview as presidential candidate, Harris plays normal foil to ‘weird’ Trump

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz emerged from their first post-convention sitdown interview on Thursday virtually without making a shred of news.

Just as planned.

The pair had faced pressure for weeks to sit down with a journalist. Some of the pressure was less than organic — Corey Lewandowski, a senior Trump campaign official, told reporters on a press call Thursday morning that the Democratic standard-bearer and her running mate were “hiding” from the media and had finally “mustered up the stamina” to do an interview.

For days, Republicans have been eagerly accusing their opponents of being unable to answer in-depth questions about their policies — even as Donald Trump publicly ridicules journalists and accused one, ABC’s Rachel Scott, of being “nasty” to him just weeks ago in his last major sitdown interview with mainstream reporters.

Harris herself also set a few expectations, albeit low ones, with her own track record of growing testy with interviewers. In one memorable 2021 example, as vice president, Harris was peppered by NBC’s Lester Holt and struggled to explain why she hadn’t visited the southern border, given her role in heading up the White House’s efforts to address root causes of migration. In another interview, she angrily rebuked radio host Charlamagne Tha God over a question about Joe Biden’s strength as president.

And of course, she easily cleared those hurdles. She and Walz came off throughout the conversation with CNN’s Dana Bash as warm without any hint of bombast or desire to make a new headline — in one instance, Harris batted away a question about a particularly provocative comment Trump had made about her racial heritage with a ho-hum response: “Same tired old playbook. Next question.”

It was not the