The Challenge of Interviewing Kamala Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, will sit down with Dana Bash of CNN tomorrow at 9 p.m. Eastern for the first major television interview of their presidential campaign.

It’s a high-stakes moment for their nascent candidacy, a chance to define their campaign, defend their ideas and test their political dexterity in the run-up to Harris’s debate against former President Donald Trump on Sept. 10.

It’s also an opportunity, following a month of rallies and campaign speeches, for the pair to tell a deeper story about themselves and their vision.

But getting them to do that might not be easy.

My colleague Astead Herndon, friend of the newsletter and host of the podcast “The Run-Up,” interviewed Harris as part of his reporting for a profile he wrote of Harris last year.

The interview was contentious, but revealing, too, and I think it’s worth revisiting now. I called Astead to ask him what it taught him, and what he’s looking for from Harris’s interview tomorrow. Our conversation was edited and condensed.

JB: Astead, thank you for joining me! You’ve held sit-down interviews with Harris twice, once in 2019 and once in 2023. How were those two interviews different?