She just recently (last week) did both of those, and hasn’t been making the rounds with news media interviews.
While the Oprah gig probably got a lot of eyeballs and reached a different audience than political news shows, it was not by any means a difficult interview. In fact, the snippet I saw had Oprah doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
Similarly, I just watched the MSNBC interview, and it was very lenient. Sure, some directs questions were asked, but she was allowed to skate around some of them with repeats about tax credits and home ownership.
I mean, the question of tariffs came up, and if course the impact of Trump’s proposed blanket tariffs. But then the difficult question was asked about Biden backing and even increasing some tariffs, what’s the difference? Her answer was very weak. She mentioned blanket tariffs were bad, then diverted to the tax credits and home building and whatnot. She totally didn’t answer what the difference was.
And that should have been a slam dunk answer. Specific tariffs in specific instances are important when the target of tariffs is unfair trade practices by foreign countries. Tariffs on certain Chinese goods are necessary when China is trying to undercut the market to sink American manufacturers and destabilize our economic production. Limited tariffs address specific unfair trade issues.
It’s not just the New York Times. Jake Tapper on CNN has been calling her out for not giving more substantive interviews to political interviewers, people who know the issues and ask tough questions. Maybe it’s This Week on ABC Sunday mornings, or a prime time with David Muir, or something else.
But she hasn’t been doing those, and Oprah is a pop culture venue, not a pointed political interview.
It’s fine if you want to argue she’s reaching a down audience or creative campaigning, but you can’t brush off the recognized fact she’s not doing a lot of mainstream political interviews.
And on that MSNBC interview, she addressed the union issue fairly well. Point out how Trump has made promises he broke to them, point out manufacturing that left under Trump and coming back under Biden.
She has material to work with.
Another question was “What do you say to those communities that have been taking in legal immigrants but are beginning to be overwhelmed, have resources stretched too far?” Answer was about the border security bill. Eventually she did say we need comprehensive immigration reform like path to citizenship, but that still doesn’t address the question asked.