SAVANNAH, Georgia: Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will sit on Thursday for their first joint television interview since they accepted their nominations as the Democratic presidential and vice presidential candidates.
Harris has taken questions from journalists on the campaign trail and been interviewed on TikTok in recent days.
But she has yet to do a one-on-one interview with a major network or print journalist or hold a formal press conference since she ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket, after President Joe Biden was forced to end his re-election campaign on July 21.
CNN’s Dana Bash, who co-anchored Biden’s June 27 debate against Republican candidate Donald Trump, will conduct the interview in Savannah, Georgia, as Harris continues her bus tour of the battleground state. The interview will air at 9 p.m. EDT (0100 GMT Friday), with CNN set to release short excerpts before it airs. Before Harris picked him as her running mate for the Nov. 5 election, Walz did a string of interviews with major television networks. Harris and Walz on Tuesday kicked off a bus tour of Georgia, piling into a big blue bus emblazoned with the words “A New Way Forward” as they worked to woo voters in a state Biden narrowly won in 2020, and which could play a decisive role in this year’s election.
Harris, joined by representative Nikema Williams, will make two stops at small businesses and thank volunteers in Chatham County, Georgia, where Democrats have chalked up steady gains in recent years.
At around 5:15 p.m. EDT, she is due to speak at a campaign rally in Savannah’s Enmarket Arena, making her the first presidential candidate to campaign in Savannah since the 1990s.
She will be introduced by Katelyn Green, president of student government at Savannah State University, the oldest historically Black college and university in the state.
The campaign is reaching out to students across battleground states which could be decisive in November to help boost turnout, but it also faces possible protests by pro-Palestinian voices angered by US arms sales to Israel. One protest by the group Savannah for Palestine is scheduled to begin at 2 p.m., organizers said.
OFF-SCRIPT MOMENTS
Harris’ lack of interviews has sparked criticism from opponents, and some concern among supporters, that she is less sharp at off-script moments than she is at rallies or speeches where a prepared speech and a TelePrompter are at her disposal.
Trump frequently holds press conferences and offers interviews to conservative news outlets. Often he uses them to criticize Harris and Biden rather than discuss his own policy aims in detail.
The CNN interview will be watched both for how Harris handles a less scripted environment and for any new details about her policies and goals for a presidency, should she win.
Early in her vice presidential tenure, Harris was criticized for her response in an interview with NBC anchor Lester Holt, who asked why she had not yet visited the US border with Mexico. She said she had not yet been to Europe, either. The Harris-Walz campaign held traditional journalists at arms length during the Democratic National Convention last week in Chicago while granting hundreds of social media influencers more access to officials.
Last week, Harris was interviewed by Track Star Show, a TikTok account with over 380,000 followers, about her love of musicians Stevie Wonder and Miles Davis.
A video on the campaign’s YouTube channel of Harris and Walz discussing his taco preferences, division in America, social programs they both support and their mutual appreciation for musician Prince — a Minnesota native — has been watched more than 1.8 million times.
Harris, Walz to hold first joint network TV interview on CNN
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Harris, Walz to hold first joint network TV interview on CNN
- Kamala Harris has taken questions from journalists on the campaign trail and been interviewed on TikTok in recent days
- But she has yet to do a one-on-one interview with a major network or print journalist or hold a formal press conference
Trump says US could run Venezuela and its oil for years
- US president made the comments less than a week after Washington seized Maduro in a raid on Caracus
- Oil has emerged as the key to US control over Venezuela, which has the world’s largest proven reserves
WASHINGTON: The United States could run Venezuela and tap into its oil reserves for years, President Donald Trump said in an interview published Thursday, less than a week after toppling its leader Nicolas Maduro.
“Only time will tell” how long Washington would demand direct oversight of the South American country, Trump told The New York Times.
But when asked whether that meant three months, six months or a year, he replied: “I would say much longer.”
The 79-year-old US leader also said he wanted to travel to Venezuela eventually. “I think at some point it’ll be safe,” he said.
US special forces snatched president Maduro and his wife in a lightning raid on Saturday and whisked them to New York to face trial on drug and weapons charges, underscoring what Trump has called the “Donroe Doctrine” of US hegemony over its backyard.
Since then Trump has repeatedly asserted that the United States will “run” Venezuela, despite the fact that it has no boots on the ground.
Venezuela’s interim leader Delcy Rodriguez insisted that no foreign power was governing her country. “There is a stain on our relations such as had never occurred in our history,” Rodriguez said of the US attack.
But she added it was “not unusual or irregular” to trade with the United States now, following an announcement by state oil firm PDVSA that it was in negotiations to sell crude to the United States.
‘Tangled mess’
Oil has in fact emerged as the key to US control over Venezuela, which has the world’s largest proven reserves.
Trump announced a plan earlier this week for the United States to sell between 30 million and 50 million barrels of Venezuelan crude, with Caracas then using the money to buy US-made products.
On the streets of Caracas, opinions remain mixed about the oil plan.
“I feel we’ll have more opportunities if the oil is in the hands of the United States than in the hands of the government,” said Jose Antonio Blanco, 26. “The decisions they’ll make are better.”
Teresa Gonzalez, 52, said she didn’t know if the oil sales plan was good or bad.
“It’s a tangled mess. What we do is try to survive, if we don’t work, we don’t eat,” she added.
Trump, who will meet oil executives on Friday, is also considering a plan for the US to exert some control over Venezuela’s PDVSA, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The US would then have a hand in controlling most of the oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere, as Trump aims to drive oil prices down to $50 a barrel, the paper reported.
Vice President JD Vance underscored that “the way that we control Venezuela is we control the purse strings.”
“We tell the regime, ‘you’re allowed to sell the oil so long as you serve America’s national interest,’” he told Fox News host Jesse Watters in an interview broadcast late Wednesday.
‘Go like Maduro’
Vance, an Iraq veteran who is himself a skeptic of US military adventures, also addressed concerns from Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” saying the plan would exert pressure “without wasting a single American life.”
The US Senate is voting Thursday on a “war powers” resolution to require congressional authorization for military force against Venezuela, a test of Republican support for Trump’s actions.
Caracas announced on Wednesday that at least 100 people had been killed in the US attack and a similar number wounded. Havana says 32 Cuban soldiers were among them.
Trump’s administration has so far indicated it intends to stick with Rodriguez and sideline opposition figures, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado.
But Rodriguez’s leadership faces internal pressures, analysts have told AFP, notably from her powerful Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez.
“Her power comes from Washington, not from the internal structure. If Trump decides she’s no longer useful, she’ll go like Maduro,” Venezuela’s former information minister Andres Izarra told AFP in an email.
The US operation in Venezuela — and Trump’s hints that other countries could be next — spread shockwaves through the Americas, but but he has since dialed down tensions with Colombia.
A day after Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro spoke with Trump on Wednedsday, Bogota said Thursday it had agreed to take “joint action” against cocaine-smuggling guerrillas on the border with Venezuela.
