The interviews Harris bombed as VP — and why her CNN appearance might be different

On Thursday, Kamala Harris will sit down with CNN and her running mate, Tim Walz, for their first joint interview since the pair were officially nominated by their party.

It will be Harris’s first sit-down interview with a cable news outlet in months — and you better believe they’ll be watching at Mar-a-Lago.

Thursday’s interview presents the first post-convention challenge for the vice president, who already passed one hurdle with her selection of Walz as a running mate. That selection ended up wowing both progressives and centrists in her party; even anti-Trump conservatives who say they are voting for Harris this year seem to be on board.

But the interview is another ballgame.

Harris has yet to face a real sustained grilling from a journalist in the wake of taking over the ticket. She took a few questions on the tarmac while welcoming home American captives from Russia, and has gaggled with reporters on the campaign trail — so she isn’t hiding from the cameras. But interviews are different, with extended follow-ups and more opportunities for misstep.

Harris, as a politician, is no stranger to this. And it’s part of the reason why she had seemed so far out of the public eye before Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

A series of awkward answers to questions in interviews over the course of her vice-presidency opened her up to political attacks and caused negative headline cycles for the White House in the press.

Take her 2021 interview with NBC’s Lester Holt. It took place just a few months after Harris was tasked with “leading the Administration’s diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras,” per a White House statement. During their conversation, Holt repeatedly