Vice President Kamala Harris is displaying one of President Joe Biden‘s biggest “flaws” as she campaigns to succeed Biden in the White House, according to a former to President George W. Bush.
Republicans have been hammering Harris, who formally accepted her party’s nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago last week, for not agreeing to a major media interview since entering the race on July 21.
Harris told reporters at a campaign stop this month that she had asked her team to schedule an interview “before the end of the month.” Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, frequently takes part in media interviews.
Anna Moneymaker
Scott Jennings, a CNN senior political commentator who served during the Bush administration as a special assistant to the president for political affairs, tied the lack of any scheduled Harris interviews to Biden’s supposed indecisiveness in a Tuesday post to X, formerly Twitter.
“One of Biden’s biggest flaws: lack of decisiveness. And now Harris is displaying the same characteristics,” Jennings wrote while sharing a clip of himself discussing the interview issue minutes earlier on CNN.
During his CNN appearance, Jennings ripped the Harris campaign over scheduling a sit-down interview.
“Look at the amount of handwringing going on in the Harris campaign over one simple decision,” Jennings said. “They cannot figure out how to, where to, when to and who to do an interview with. One simple decision.
“We want to put her in charge of the country and make all kinds of complex decisions? They can’t even decide when and how to do an interview.”
Newsweek reached out for comment to the Harris campaign via email on Tuesday.
Jennings then offered Democrats some advice as a political strategist, suggesting that Harris should attempt to distance herself from Biden in any interview that does take place.
“If I were counseling them, I would say pick somebody and go in and be prepared to face the discrepancies in your record,” Jennings said. “You’ve got all these anonymous press statements now saying you don’t support any of the stuff you used to support. You’re gonna have to tackle it head-on.
“Number two, she’s gonna have to say Joe Biden made some mistakes. If she’s not willing to do that, she’s gonna wear Biden [and] it’s gonna make it hard to win….Trump’s gonna have her for the rest of the fall basically as a continuation of the Biden agenda.”
Jennings’ CNN colleague, Van Jones, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, said during a broadcast following the DNC last week that he believed Harris would be able to escape Biden’s baggage “penalty free.”