Jen O’Malley Dillon, who formerly chaired Vice President Kamala Harris‘s campaign, claimed the slow start to introduce Harris to the media was a timing issue.
Three weeks after Harris lost to Donald Trump, her top campaign officials spoke with Pod Save America to offer their analysis. Harris largely avoided the media until after her debate appearance against Trump in September, after announcing her candidacy in July. Less than a month before the election, Harris appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast, a 60 Minutes interview, and the Howard Stern show, all within a week.
O’Malley Dillon acknowledged criticisms from opponents like Trump’s then-pick for Vice President J.D. Vance but claimed it was a busy month behind the scenes of the campaign. This was her first interview since the Nov. 5 election.
“A 107 days, two weeks f***ed up because of a hurricane, two weeks talking about how she didn’t do interviews. Which, you know, she was doing plenty but we were doing it in our own way. We had to, you know, be the nominee, had to find a running mate and do a rollout. I mean, there was all these things that you kind of want to factor in,” O’Malley Dillon said. “But real people heard in some way that we were not going to have interviews, which was both not true and also so counter to any kind of standard that was put on Trump.”
Harris’s brief campaign contrasted with her opponent Trump, who had been campaigning since late 2022. Then, in September, Hurricane Helene rocked the southeast coast. In the days following the storm making landfall, Harris made two trips to the affected areas.
However, even when the campaign booked interviews, O’Malley Dillon complained that “the questions were small and process-y” and weren’t informative but instead represented a “disservice to voters.”
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“I think back and think we should have signaled more of our strategy early on about podcasts and who we were trying to reach, but we had a limited amount of time to reach the people we were trying to reach, and we were trying to go to them,” O’Malley Dillon said, “but being up against a narrative that we weren’t doing anything or we were afraid to have interviews is completely bull****.”
Harris went on to lose every swing state in the country. She is reportedly considering a run for governor of California.