Ian Sams, Harris’s campaign spokesman, took some jabs at Fox News host Dana Perino in an interview Friday.
“Is it risky to bet all your chips on one debate when she’s never done a Q&A with anybody outside of debate prep?” Perino asked Sams on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom,” referring to Harris.
Sams replied, “Well, I reject that. She did a lengthy interview with Dana Bassey on CNN…”
“One interview in 47 days?” Perino asked.
Later in the conversation, he claimed the moderator acted as if Harris was “in the witness protection program.”
“She traveled to key battleground states, speaking to stadiums with thousands of people in them,” added Sams, who served as a press secretary for the White House Office of the Counsel.
Before Harris’ recent interview with Bash, she had been under increasing pressure to do interviews since she became the Democratic nominee after President Biden decided to withdraw from the race. Harris interviewed her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), and she also faced criticism.
“It’s clear that her team and her party thinks she needs a babysitter,” Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-Iowa) said last week. “So they put her vice presidential candidate on stage with her, so that he can step in and answer questions as things unfold, like we just saw in the clip, like she did in her previous interview.”
Despite the criticism, the vice president completed the interview without any major mistakes and did not report any major news.
Sam’s defense comes as Harris and former President Trump face off in a debate hosted by ABC News next Tuesday night.
Biden’s poor performance in the last presidential debate led to growing calls within the Democratic Party for him to drop out of the race. He eventually decided to do so in late July, endorsing Harris.
