Vice President Kamala Harris has gone 18 days without holding a formal press conference since becoming the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee as of Thursday.

Harris became essentially the de facto nominee after President Biden endorsed her on July 21 when he dropped out of the race and she officially clinched the nomination last week. She has been busy on the campaign trail, spoken at various events, and given informal remarks to reporters at various points, but hasn’t done a formal press conference or wide-ranging interview in the 16 days that have followed. 

She also failed to appear at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago, where former President Trump made headlines last week with a heated question-and-answer session, although she could make a future appearance with the group.

This week, she made headlines by picking Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, but the two have still not been questioned formally in interviews or press conferences. It's gotten the attention of GOP vice-presidential candidate JD Vance, who has implored the media to do better on the issue and get Harris to answer questions.

During a Wednesday press conference in Detroit, Vance urged reporters to "show a little bit of self-awareness" and pushed Harris to "do the job of a presidential candidate" by speaking to reporters.

"Until she does, you guys have got to stop giving her a honeymoon and pretending that she is something she isn't," he said. 

Harris has been so elusive that The New York Times published excerpts from an interview she conducted last year to see where her answers "land now." Some critics have likened the strategy thus far to what was derided as the Biden "basement" approach in 2020.

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Much of the Democratic Party — including governors, senators and House members as well as party leaders — quickly coalesced behind Harris following Biden's blockbuster news. But critics have started to take notice that Harris hasn’t faced tough questions since. 

National Review senior writer Noah Rothman asked his social media followers on Wednesday, "When is Kamala Harris going to hold a press conference?" 

"The most revealing exposure to which a candidate can submit is a prolonged press conference — and that’s precisely what Harris needs to do. Indeed, we know that’s what she needs to do because it was only a few weeks ago that Democratic political professionals and their allies insisted that was what Biden had to do," he wrote for National Review.

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NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham expects her to follow President Biden’s 2020 playbook, when he was famously accused of hiding in his basement during the COVID pandemic. 

"Kamala Harris should absolutely hold a press conference. One would expect it when she names her vice-presidential pick. But we cannot expect her to break from Biden's serial avoidance of press conferences," Graham told Fox News Digital. 

"Since the 2020 campaign, we have witnessed the bizarre spectacle of Donald Trump granting wide access to networks that suggest he's a fascist and hammer him daily, while Biden and Harris won't grant interviews to media outlets that gurgle all over them and their ‘historic accomplishments,’" he continued. "Either they think the press can never be servile enough or they are projecting a complete lack of confidence in their efforts to put complete sentences together." 

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DePauw University media studies professor Jeffrey McCall believes the Harris campaign is "well aware that Biden dodged the media throughout his 2020 campaign and still got elected."

"The Harris camp is also well aware that their candidate doesn't do well in unscripted settings, not to mention that a presser or legitimate sit-down interview would necessarily require her to defend some of her positions, previous statements and record. Thus, a rerun of the Biden basement campaign sounds pretty good, as long as you throw in a couple of rallies with Megan Thee Stallion," McCall added, referring to the rapper who appeared at Harris’ Atlanta rally on Tuesday. 

He suggested that Harris doesn’t feel pressure "to do a press conference just because she has fallen into the nomination" because Democrats will support her either way. 

"The supporters rallying around her don't expect her to be accountable and have little interest in her policy positions and so on. That she's not Biden, or Trump, is sufficient for those supporters," McCall said. 

"From a rhetorical strategy standpoint, however, it would behoove Harris to actually do a presser and do real journalistic interviews," he continued.  "At some point, it would seem, she'll have to attract moderates or undecided voters who want to see her take questions."

The Harris campaign has not responded to requests for comment. 

The Democratic National Convention is set to kick off Aug. 19 in Chicago. 

Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report. 

Catholic Bishop Robert Barron says society’s love for athletic "excellence" on display at this year’s Olympic Games runs contrary to its current preoccupation with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, and other efforts to ensure people have equality of outcomes in life rather than opportunity. 

In an interview with Fox News Digital, the bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota and prominent Catholic influencer used the example of elite Olympic gymnast Simone Biles to illustrate the folly of DEI. He explained that her talent came about because she beat out other athletes to become the best. In other words, she excluded individuals who didn’t measure up in her sport.

"Well, that's not only unjust, but it militates against the very excellence that we're celebrating," Barron told Fox, regarding how forced equality of outcomes goes against what people cheer so hard for at the Olympics.

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Bishop Barron said there’s a "tension" between athletic achievement and so-called equity. 

"I don't think you can really have both those things at the same time," he said, noting that there is an important difference between equity of outcome and "equality of opportunity."

He used the record-breaking gymnast – who he called the "greatest of all time" –  to make the point: "Let's say if at some point in her career, Simone Biles was told, 'No, no, you can't go out for the gymnastics team because you're Black or because you're a woman' or whatever. Of course, that's unjust. And that should always be fought any time at any level."

He continued, "Well, there's that – equality of opportunity. But then there's equity of outcome, which our society now seems to be highly prizing; so that the outcome of a situation or a particular walk of life should correspond to, let's say, the racial breakdown of a society, etc."

Bishop Barron declared the latter framework unjust. He then went on to describe how Biles achieving a higher athletic standard than practically everyone else on earth in her field is contrary to that, and praiseworthy.

"She stands at the pinnacle of Olympic excellence because along the arc of her life, armies of people have been excluded. Now what I mean is, not that they weren't given equality of opportunity. What I mean is, well, she won a medal, which means the other people competing with her didn't win the medal."

"She made team after team after team, which meant all kinds of other people that went out for the team were excluded," he added.

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He used other examples of people or institutions achieving excellence as flying in the face of the equity of outcomes philosophy. He mentioned speaking at an American university where he asked the students if they believed their institution had achieved "complete inclusivity." 

Barron recounted that all the students nodded, so he confronted them with the fact that there was "an army of people" that was "excluded from the process so that you could be included in this university."

"I'm not judging the school at all. I'm not saying it's unjust. I'm saying they want to be an elite school. And so, they excluded all kinds of people so that the really excellent students might be included," Barron said, before making the same point with members of a world-class orchestra.