copenlu/druid huggingface dataset:
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2024-08-29): On Thursday, US Vice President and presidential hopeful Kamala Harris will sit down for her first major broadcast interview since she became the face of the Democratic Party following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race. [...] Until now, Harris has taken a cautious approach towards the press, much like Biden, who has held fewer news conferences and media interviews than any of the past seven US presidents, Axios reported, citing presidential scholar Martha Joynt Kumar. Harris’s own sparse engagement with the media has come under scrutiny, especially from the Republicans. "She doesn’t know how to do a news conference; she’s not smart enough to do a news conference," Republican challenger Donald Trump said during a news conference of his own on August 15.
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2024-08-28): More than five weeks after launching her White House bid, Vice President Kamala Harris will sit down for an interview with a major network as the campaign heads into the home stretch. [...] The vice president has been on the campaign trail frequently, but she has taken few questions from the press and has not unveiled an extensive policy platform, with her website not having a section for policy as of Wednesday morning. [...] Since entering the White House as Biden’s vice president in 2021, Harris has had several special moments in interviews.
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2024-08-08): Harris takes questions, says she’ll do full interview by end of August by Brett Samuels - 08/08/24 6:10 PM ET by Brett Samuels - 08/08/24 6:10 PM ET Vice President Harris fielded questions from reporters traveling with her in Michigan on Thursday and said she hoped to sit down for an extended interview before the end of the month. [...] Vance has posted daily updates on social media about how long Harris has gone without taking questions, and on Wednesday he seized on the issue when their planes were on a tarmac in Wisconsin at the same time.
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2024-09-19): For several weeks after Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee for president, media observers and critics questioned her decision to remain inaccessible to the press. Some Donald Trump allies assailed the vice president as incapable of getting through an interview. Half a dozen interviews later, her media strategy is taking shape, even if viewers in New York and Washington might not be seeing it. In recent days, Harris has granted sit-downs to local media outlets and fielded questions in unconventional forums to target crucial swing state and minority voters. Her running mate Tim Walz is doing the same. [...] Sams criticized Trump’s approach while telling CNN that Harris is "going where people get their news, and in every setting she’s taking questions — often tough ones — about her plans and agenda. Maybe we’re completely wrong and a two hour live space with Elon Musk or hawking some sketchy crypto venture is the best way to reach battleground swing voters, but I doubt it."
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2024-08-06): The chief indication that the Harris team knows what it’s doing may be its effort to keep the candidate herself under wraps. Sure, we’ve seen a lot of her: in ads, scripted rallies and a few brief statements. But she hasn’t endured an extended interaction with the press since before the June 27 debate that doomed Biden’s candidacy. The last time was on June 24 on MSNBC’s "Morning Joe," hardly a challenging venue for a Democrat. The Harris campaign’s decision to avoid sitting down with an aggressive or even particularly curious reporter is not necessarily a sign that it lacks confidence in her (as many critics insist). Even if she were a fantastic off-the-cuff political communicator — which she is not — keeping her on script for a while makes sense. The longer she can be all things to all people — or at least to all persuadable voters — the better off she is. Answering hard questions runs the risk of disabusing some voters of who they think or hope she is. [...] Less consequential but more outrageous is the press’ collective complicity in Harris’ strategy. The vice president’s campaign has wisely flip-flopped on many of the fatally left-wing positions she took during her ill-fated first presidential campaign — against fracking, in favor of Medicare for all, sympathetic to calls to cut funding to police departments and so on. But the press shouldn’t let her get away with it so easily.
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2024-07-25): In about 48 hours, Vice President Kamala Harris went from No. 2 on the Democratic presidential ticket to the presumptive presidential nominee, after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed her. Here, we fact-check some of Harris’ recent speeches — before and after Biden dropped out: [...] Biden, who never recovered from a disastrous debate performance in late June, announced on July 21 that he would not seek reelection, saying it was in the "best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President." Shortly after, Biden gave Harris his "full support and endorsement" for president. [...] Since Biden dropped out and endorsed her, Harris has delivered two speeches and both times she referred to Project 2025 — a conservative plan for remaking the federal government — as Trump’s plan, even though the former president has disavowed it.
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2024-09-23): Bar the time window mentioned at the end, this back-and-forth as to whether Kamala Harris should do more media interviews—all of it from the past few days—could have been lifted from a newsletter I wrote over a month ago, when that debate started to ramp up among commentators: some argued that Harris was dodging scrutiny (and opening herself up to political attacks in the process); others countered that Harris doesn’t need the press to get her message out and that the calls for her to do more interviews were less a function of high-minded concern for accountability and more one of self-absorbed elite-media whining. If that debate never quite went away in between times, it got a renewed jolt of energy last week—not least due to a story in Axios bearing the headline "The Harris-Walz media strategy: Hide from the press" (and an illustration reinforcing the point). By Axios’s count, since President Biden dropped out of the presidential race, in July, Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, had taken part in seven interviews or press conferences, compared with Donald Trump and J.D. Vance’s combined seventy-two.
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2024-08-14): With so much going her way, Harris’ decision to hold off on any major interviews is prudent — at least for the moment. [...] In no way is this a defense of Harris for not facing tough questions from the media, but the smart move is to set the narrative at the convention — and then consider a major interview or press conference. Harris has already said she plans on giving an interview by the end of the month. [...] In a piece for The Daily Beast, David Rothkopf wrote, "You have seen so-called pundits pick up on the silly assertions of JD Vance that Harris is not speaking to the media even though she has been on constant public display ever since her candidacy began. She has given many addresses during that time, she has spoken to the press frequently — as her opponent has been hunkered down doing precious little except posting nutty conspiracy theories on social media, lying at a rate worthy of an Olympic medal during one interview with a friendly journalist, and ranting about things that did not happen with people who did not do them."
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2020-09-23): Dinesh D'Souza stated on September 23, 2020 in an Instagram post: Kamala Harris "has not formally taken questions from the press a single time" since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. By Bill McCarthy• September 25, 2020 Threads posts stated on September 02, 2024 in a Threads post: Photo shows Vice President Kamala Harris "in the 90s." By Ciara O'Rourke• September 4, 2024 Laura Loomer stated on July 31, 2024 in an X post: "Nowhere on her birth certificate does it say that she is BLACK OR AFRICAN. … Kamala Harris is NOT black and never has been." By Jeff Cercone• August 6, 2024 Facebook posts stated on August 02, 2020 in a Facebook post: If Joe Biden can’t serve his full term, Kamala Harris "cannot by constitutional law become president." By Louis Jacobson, Ciara O'Rourke• August 11, 2020 Facebook posts stated on September 01, 2020 in a Facebook post: Says "Kamala Harris is not able to be VP. Because she's a felon. She lied on her application to buy a gun here in CA."
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2024-08-30): Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has given her first interview since entering the race - a joint conversation alongside running mate Tim Walz. [...] The following year, in the 2020 vice presidential debate when she was on the Biden ticket, Ms Harris said "Joe Biden will not end fracking" and: "I will repeat, and the American people know, that Joe Biden will not ban fracking." [...] Kamala Harris has said that as president she would restore the child tax credit enhancement and provide $6,000 per child to families for the first year of a baby’s life.
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2024-08-07): She has spoken with numerous media outlets about U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’s role in President Joe Biden’s White House administration, as well as Harris’s own 2020 and 2024 presidential campaigns. [...] When discussions arose about President Biden stepping down, there were also murmurs about rewriting the entire ticket. I believe that a significant reason behind the support for Vice President Harris is the recognition that this process needed to reflect the people's interests. She's got a number of years of experience, and a lot of these factors are leading to a lot of this support. [...] I think the person we have today before us, Vice President Harris, the candidate today, is different than Senator Harris, the candidate of yesteryear. The last time she ran for president, she was a U.S. senator from California with extensive experiences as the state’s attorney general and a prosecutor. She had significant accomplishments for her state. Now, she has traveled to almost as many countries as President Biden, participated in numerous decision-making meetings with him, has been at the helm of various legislative initiatives, and has cast deciding votes in the Senate as the Vice President of the United States. She has engaged in policy discussions with the president and has been a vocal advocate in those crucial spaces. This is someone who understands how the inner workings of what it takes to be President of the United States.
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2024-07-24): Just one day after President Biden threw his support behind Vice President Harris for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination after dropping out of the race, Harris secured enough delegates to win the nomination, according to the Associated Press. [...] Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, has had a career with many firsts: She became the country's first Indian American senator when she was inaugurated in 2017. She is California’s first female and South Asian attorney general. In 2021, she became the first woman to become vice president, in addition to being the first Black or Asian American person in the position. [...] Despite Harris’ underwhelming performance in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Biden nominated her to be his running mate, making her the first Black woman and person of Indian descent to be nominated by a major party for national office. The announcement was celebrated by many in the party: She had been seen as a rising leader among Democrats, and capable of leading an increasingly diversifying party and country.
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2024-08-06): Still, Harris was at the top of the vice presidential shortlist when Biden was pondering his running mate, after his pledge in early 2020 that he would choose a Black woman as his No. 2. He was fond of Harris, who had forged a close friendship with his now-deceased son Beau, who had been Delaware’s attorney general when she was in that job for California. [...] Throughout her vice presidency, Harris has been careful to remain loyal to Biden while emphasizing that she would be ready to step in if needed. That dramatic transition began in late June after the first debate between Biden and Trump, where the president’s stumbles were so cataclysmic that he could never reverse the loss of confidence from other Democrats. [...] Yet Democrats are anticipating that Harris’ political honeymoon will wear off, and she is inevitably going to come under tougher scrutiny for Biden administration positions, the state of the economy and volatile situations abroad, particularly in the Middle East. Harris has also yet to answer extended questions from journalists nor sit down for a formal interview since she began her run.
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2024-08-07): Why Harris isn’t taking questions [...] Harris’ last formal television sit-down interview was on June 24, when she joined MSNBC’s "Morning Joe" to mark the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that ended federal protections for abortion. Three days later, she appeared on CNN and spoke one-on-one with anchor ANDERSON COOPER less than an hour after Biden’s disastrous debate performance, acknowledging that "it was a slow start" but confidently suggesting that the country should assess his performance in the office over three and a half years, not "90 minutes on a debate stage." [...] Ever since Biden passed Harris the baton, news organizations have been pushing the vice president’s team for a sit-down interview. According to two people familiar with the campaign’s thinking, there are ongoing discussions about a joint interview with Harris and Walz prior to the convention, which begins on Aug. 19 in Chicago. But on the whole, Harris’ top communications aides are deeply skeptical, as Biden’s inner circle was, that doing big interviews with major TV networks or national newspapers offer much real upside when it comes to reaching swing voters.
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2024-07-23): Harris made her first public remarks since the announcement at the White House Monday at an event honoring college athletes. She said she's "deeply, deeply grateful" to Mr. Biden for his "service to his nation" and called his legacy "unmatched in modern history." [...] President Biden has frequently relied on Vice President Kamala Harris to be the White House's voice of unflinching support for reproductive health rights. [...] Vice President Kamala Harris has emerged as a top contender to replace President Biden at the top of Democratic ticket following his historic decision to withdraw from the 2024 race for the White House.
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2024-07-22): Democrats united behind Vice President Kamala Harris as the party's front-runner for the presidential nomination Monday, and their excitement translated into a juggernaut day of fundraising for the party and for Harris' campaign. [...] While not yet formally the party's presumptive nominee, Harris' position as frontrunner is rock solid, and no potential challengers have signaled they intend to vie for the nomination. In the hours since President Joe Biden announced that he would end his teetering reelection campaign, Harris and the Democratic party have pulled in roughly $250 million in online donations and major donor commitments.
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2024-07-21): President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him on Sunday. [...] In a follow-up post, Biden praised Harris and urged Democrats to unite behind her. "My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President," Biden wrote. "And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year." Harris, who was informed of Biden’s decision Sunday, said in a statement that she was "honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination." She is spending the day reaching out to lawmakers, outside organizations and donors, and was slated to make up to 200 calls on Sunday alone, a top Democratic source close to her told CNN.
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2024-07-21): Now, Harris is set to get another shot. As the sitting vice president, she is a leading candidate to succeed Biden after his exit from the race, receiving his immediate endorsement. Other elected officials might step forward to challenge Harris, dividing Democrats and clouding the general election picture ahead of a November showdown with Donald Trump. [...] When Harris gave that announcement speech before a hometown crowd five years ago, her prospects seemed dazzling. A Monmouth University poll released the week after she entered the race showed her running third in a crowded Democratic field that eventually numbered more than two dozen. With 11% support, she trailed only Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, both of whom had run presidential races before. [...] Both Harris’ government office and the Biden-Harris campaign declined to comment for this article before Biden's withdrawal.
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2024-07-25): President Joe Biden’s decision on Sunday to withdraw from the presidential race and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris galvanized Democratic donors, injecting tens of millions of dollars into a campaign that was rapidly burning through cash. Within 36 hours of Biden’s announcement on July 21, Harris raised more than $100 million, according to her campaign, including $81 million in the first 24 hours. The $100 million cash infusion would more than double the $96 million the Biden-Harris campaign had in cash on hand at the end of June. [...] Harris has also demonstrated the ability to mobilize donors in previous elections. She raised more than $40 million during her 2020 presidential campaign before dropping out and becoming Biden’s vice president. During her 2016 Senate campaign in California, Harris raised more than $15 million.
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2024-08-12): Like Biden, Harris has since taken questions from reporters between campaign stops; unlike Biden, she has, per Politico, spoken routinely with journalists on her plane, albeit without going on the record. This, Semafor’s Dave Weigel noted in the middle of last week, might be "one reason that you haven’t seen as much media grumbling about access—the outlets paying for the plane are getting facetime"; other observers noted a paucity of grumbling, too, at least compared with the pressure put on Biden to submit to interviewers. Still, there was some grumbling, and in recent days, it seems to have grown louder. Much of it, it should be noted, has come from the Trump campaign and its allies. On the day that Politico published its story, J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate, approached Harris’s plane as they crossed paths in Wisconsin, telling reporters that he wanted to say hi and "ask her why she refuses to answer questions from the media"; yesterday, he did a full-ish Ginsburg on the Sunday shows to hammer home the point. ("Kamala Harris has done as many tough interviews as Tim Walz has battlefield deployments," he tweeted afterward, rolling two attack lines into one.)
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2021-03-24): Remarks by President Biden and Vice President Harris in a Meeting on Immigration [...] But the Vice President and I, and all of us here, have been working very hard to — to pass the legislation that — that is going to beat this virus, as well as get people back to work and change their prospects. And so, she’s traveling all over the country working that. In addition to that, there’s about five other major things she’s handling, but I’ve asked her, the VP, today — because she’s the most qualified person to do it — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border.
Claim: Kamala Harris “has not formally taken questions from the press a single time” since she was announced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick. (Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-09-23)
Evidence (2024-07-23): Biden's pick Kamala Harris has Democrats' support. What happens next? President Joe Biden has dropped out of the US election race and announced his support for Vice-President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party's nominee. [...] - LIVE: Latest updates as Joe Biden drops out of US presidential election race - WATCH: How Joe Biden's bid for re-election came to an end - IN FULL: Biden's letter announcing his withdrawal - PROFILE: Kamala Harris, the VP who Biden is backing for president - ANALYSIS: What Biden quitting means for Harris, the Democrats and Trump