CNN’s much-anticipated sit-down interview with the 2024 Democratic presidential ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz averaged 6.3 million viewers Thursday, according to data from Nielsen.

The audience size was slightly larger than that of a typical town hall or formal interview of a presidential or vice presidential candidate.

Harris had not done an in-depth chat with a journalist since President Biden ended his reelection campaign and endorsed the vice president on July 21.

The matter became a frequent talking point for pundits and the Republican opposition after what was widely considered a strong nominating convention last week in Chicago.

Fox News pulled 6.1 million viewers on July 15 when Sean Hannity conducted the first interview with former President Trump’s vice presidential running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio).

The candidates on the Republican ticket appeared together on the July 22 edition of “Jesse Watters Tonight” after their party’s convention, drawing 4.3 million viewers.

When Harris and President Biden sat down with ABC News after the Democratic National Convention in August 2020, 5.1 million viewers watched.

Trump is a frequent presence on Fox News and other conservative outlets, making his appearance less of an event. The last time Trump was interviewed on CNN — in a much-maligned town hall staged on May 10, 2023 — 3.3 million viewers watched.

The hourlong CNN special with Harris and Walz contained about 17 minutes of actual conversation (the ratings measured the program from 9 p.m. to 9:50 p.m. Eastern versus a full hour for comparable interviews). The candidates were taped earlier in the day while campaigning through Georgia, an important swing state in the election.

Harris answered questions from CNN anchor Dana Bash — who co-moderated the pivotal presidential debate between Trump and Biden — on a number of shifts in her policy positions since her short-lived presidential campaign in 2020. Harris also offered details on her telephone conversation with Biden the day he withdrew from the race and gave her his endorsement.

Reaction to the speech predictably broke down along partisan lines.

Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as White House communications director for Trump and is now an outspoken critic of the former president, said on X that Harris “did well. She is going to win.”

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro posted, “Wow is she awful.”

Trump is set to appear in an hourlong town hall with Hannity on Wednesday. Both Trump and Harris are committed to meet Sept. 10 for their only scheduled debate in Philadelphia, moderated by ABC News anchor David Muir and Linsey Davis.

Israel’s largest labor union is planning a massive strike for Monday to demand a cease-fire deal between the nation and Hamas after six Israeli hostages were found dead in a Hamas tunnel. 

“We are getting body bags instead of a deal,” Histadrut Labor Federation chief Arnon Bar-David said Sunday to reporters, according to Reuters.  

“We must reach a deal. A deal is more important than anything else,” he said.

The Histadrut Labor Federation is Israel’s main labor union that represents hundreds of thousands of workers. Bar-David’s call for a one-day strike was supported by manufacturers and tech entrepreneurs in the country, according to Reuters.

AMERICAN HOSTAGE HERSH GOLDBERG-POLIN, 5 OTHERS ‘BRUTALLY MURDERED’ BY HAMAS RIGHT BEFORE RESCUE: IDF

“Without the return of the hostages, we will not be able to end the war, we will not be able to rehabilitate ourselves as a society, and we will not be able to begin to rehabilitate the Israeli economy,” Israel’s Manufacturers’ Association leader Ron Tomer said in support of Bar-David’s call for a strike. 

“The government must ensure that it does everything for the return of the hostages as soon as possible, even under the limitations of a limited cease-fire, and I call on all businesses in Israel to act to make it happen,” he added.

ISRAEL RECOVERS 6 DEAD HOSTAGES IN ‘COMPLEX RESCUE OPERATION,’ SAYS BODIES HELD UNDER HUMANITARIAN AREA

Israeli municipalities such as Tel Aviv, Kfar Saba, and Givatayim agreed to join the strike on Monday, the New York Post reported. 

Protesters rally outside the Defence Ministry against the government and to show support for the hostages who were kidnapped during the deadly October 7 attack, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Tel Aviv, Israel, September 1, 2024. Reuters/Florion Goga (Reuters)

Hamas terrorists killed six hostages Saturday as Israel Defense Forces launched a rescue operation in the tunnels below Gaza’s Rafah. Among the bodies recovered was Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who had been held by the Hamas terrorists since Oct. 7, when war first broke out between Hamas and Israel. 

Those confirmed dead include: Goldberg-Polin, 23, Eden Yerushalmi, 24, Ori Danino, 25, Alex Lobanov, 32, Carmel Gat, 40, and Almog Sarusi, 27.

Hersh Goldberg-Polin (Israel’s Minister of Defense)

“According to our initial assessment, they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists shortly before we reached them,” IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a statement.

NETANYAHU MOURNS DEATHS OF SIX HOSTAGES RECOVERED IN GAZA, VOWS TO ‘SETTLE ACCOUNTS’ WITH HAMAS

War has been raging in the Middle East since Oct. 7, when Hamas launched a series of attacks on Israel, sparking Israel to declare war soon afterward. An estimated 257 Israeli hostages were trapped in Gaza when the war first began, and 101 hostages are still in Gaza. Of the 101 remaining hostages, 66 are believed to be alive, four of whom are American citizens. 

Protesters rally outside the Defence Ministry against the government and to show support for the hostages who were kidnapped during the deadly October 7 attack, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Tel Aviv, Israel, September 1, 2024. Reuters/Florion Goga (REUTERS)

Bar-David said that a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas had failed due to “political considerations,” in a jab at Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

After the hostages’ bodies were recovered, Netanyahu said in a statement that he was “shocked to the core” by the murders.

DEFENSE MINISTER SAYS ISRAEL MUST ‘WIDEN THE GOALS’ OF WAR TO RETURN RESIDENTS TO THE NORTH

“He who murders abductees – does not want a deal. We are in a difficult day. The heart of the entire nation was torn,” Netanyahu said. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress in the chamber of the House of Representatives at the U.S. Capitol on July 24, 2024, in Washington, D.C.  (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

“Along with all the citizens of Israel, I was shocked to the core by the terrible cold-blooded murder of six of our abductees.”

Protesters on Sunday flooded the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and outside Netayhu’s residence to demand a cease-fire, Reuters reported. 

People run as protesters rally outside the Defence Ministry against the government and to show support for the hostages who were kidnapped during the deadly October 7 attack, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Tel Aviv, Israel, September 1, 2024. Reuters/Florion Goga (Reuters)

The strike will begin at 6 a.m. and will include disruptions such as causing Israel’s main airport, the Ben Gurion Airport, to shut down. 

Fox News Digital’s Landon Mion contributed to this report. 

Although former President Trump has spent years attacking the integrity of early and mail-in voting, his campaign and the Republican National Committee this week launched what they called a “huge” and “revolutionary” effort to encourage both methods of casting ballots in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

In an email promoting a website called SwampTheVoteUSA.com, RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said in a statement: “As President Trump has consistently said, voting by mail, voting early, and voting on Election Day are all good options.”

But the Republican presidential nominee — who falsely says that mail-in voting is plagued by fraud and cost him the White House four years ago — continues to trash the popular method of casting ballots, complicating his own party’s efforts to get out the vote.

In an interview with television host Dr. Phil McGraw that aired Tuesday, the same day Whatley’s statement went out, Trump said voting by mail “shouldn’t be allowed” and falsely claimed that “any time you have a mail-in ballot, there’s going to be massive fraud.”

He criticized California for sending ballots by mail to every registered voter. He also falsely claimed that Republicans automatically lose elections in the Golden State and that many voters receive up to seven ballots apiece.

“If Jesus came down and was the vote counter, I would win California, OK?” he said. “In other words, if we had an honest vote counter, a really honest vote counter, I’d do great with the Hispanics.”

In 2020, Trump lost California, the home state of his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, by more than 5 million votes.

Despite the efforts of Trump’s campaign officials and the Republican Party, it is simply too late to rebuild trust in mail-in voting among the former president’s supporters by election day, said David Becker, a former U.S. Justice Department lawyer who heads the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research.

“They still believe this to their core,” he said of Trump’s falsehoods about mail-in voting being rigged. “Trump is reinforcing this, so an official press release from the RNC or an official website is not going to change that.”

The Swamp the Vote website and other efforts by the Republican Party to encourage different methods of voting, he added, are good — and normal — efforts to increase participation, despite what their candidate is saying.

Vote-by-mail programs, Becker said, date back to at least the Civil War and were embraced by both parties, Becker said.

Republicans traditionally favored them even more than Democrats because GOP supporters tended to be older and such voting allowed them to participate in democracy while avoiding standing in line at the polls.

But in 2020, as more states were mailing every voter a ballot because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump denigrated these votes as inherently fraudulent.

According to the Census Bureau, 43% of Americans cast their ballots by mail in the 2020 election, and 26% voted in person before election day.

In Trump’s speech near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, when he encouraged his supporters to march to the U.S. Capitol as Congress was certifying the results of his election defeat, he said that through “the scam of mail-in ballots,” Democrats “attempted the most brazen and outrageous election theft.”

In the four years since Trump’s loss, Republicans have largely turned away from mail-in voting.

In a February survey by the Pew Research Center, 28% of Republicans said any voter should be allowed to cast a ballot by mail if they want to — a steep decline from 2020, when 49% of Republicans held that belief.

An overwhelming proportion of Democrats — 87% in February and 84% in 2020 — supported all voters having access to mail-in ballots.

Still, GOP leaders and conservative activists are trying to rebuild voters’ confidence in the process.

On Tuesday, the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee said “patriots should take advantage of vote by mail, early voting, and Election Day voting — whatever method works best for you.”

It lauded the Swamp the Vote website, through which voters can request ballots by mail, as “the FIRST non-government website giving voters full access to Pennsylvania’s election toolkit,” even though it is “connected to the Pennsylvania Department of State.”

Turning Point Action, the youth group led byright-wing activist Charlie Kirk, is pushing an initiative it calls Chase the Vote, in which it aims to use a “ballot chasing army” in battleground states to knock on voters’ doors and persuade them to send in their mail-in ballots.

“The Radical Left,” Turning Point’s website says, “is beating us in the ballot game.”

In an appearance at a Turning Point event in June, Trump, referencing Kirk and Whatley, said: “I said to Charlie, and I said to Michael, I said: ‘Listen, we don’t need votes. We got more votes than anybody’s ever had. We need to watch the vote. We need to guard the vote. We need to stop the steal. We don’t need votes.’”

He went on to say mail-in ballots are “treacherous” and that ballot drop boxes are “horrible.”