Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019 sit-down with Fox News\u2019 Bret Baier<\/a> wasn\u2019t an interview; it was a competition. Baier sought to box Harris into giving no-win answers to what were at times loaded questions. Harris\u2019 goal seemed to be making it through the 30-minute conversation without meandering too often into nondescript word salad answers. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019d call the finished result a draw, but it was definitely no knockout.<\/p>\n

Baier jumped right into it, pressing Harris to answer for the Biden administration\u2019s decision<\/a> to immediately reverse the Trump administration\u2019s \u201cRemain in Mexico\u201d policy, which required asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases were reviewed by U.S. immigration courts. Baier said the administration\u2019s border policies allowed 6 million undocumented immigrants<\/a> into the country and asked whether she regrets reversing the policy. Harris tried to pivot, countering that the Biden administration has pushed for immigration reform in Congress since day one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if I\u2019d call the finished result a draw, but it was definitely no knockout.<\/p>\n

It was fair and good journalistic practice for Baier to press the vice president about policies that her own administration seems to understand have failed<\/a> and that have provided terrible optics to the public. But when Baier repeatedly asked Harris if she felt she owed an apology to the families of Jocelyn Nungaray, Laken Riley and Rachel Morin \u2014 three young women allegedly killed by migrants who crossed the border illegally \u2014 his line of questioning turned into demagoguery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of all the issues to ask the Democratic nominee, Baier then went with a culture war lightning rod, asking if she supports publicly funded trans-affirming surgery for prisoners \u2014 the focal point of numerous pro-Trump campaign ads, but hardly the kind of \u201ckitchen table\u201d issue that supposedly motivates the economic populism of Trump\u2019s base.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Harris noted that former Trump administration officials have said Trump is unfit for office, Baier basically acted like a Trump campaign surrogate: \u201cIf that\u2019s the case, why is half the country supporting him? Why is he beating you in a lot of swing states? Why, if he\u2019s as bad as you say, that half of this country is now supporting this person who could be the 47th president of the United States? Why is that happening?\u201d <\/p>\n

Harris replied that the election was never meant to be a cakewalk, to which Baier interjected, \u201cSo are they misguided, the 50%? Are they stupid? What is it?\u201d You could practically see the hamster running the wheel inside Baier\u2019s head, hoping like heck for a sound bite to rival Hillary Clinton\u2019s notorious \u201c basket of deplorables<\/a>\u201d comment in 2016. <\/p>\n

But Harris didn\u2019t take the bait, saying she\u2019d never call the American people something like that, and she reminded Baier that Trump\u2019s the one who regularly demeans Americans, such as when he\u00a0spoke<\/a> to Fox News\u2019 \u201cSunday Morning Futures\u201d of\u00a0\u201cthe enemy within.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Baier immediately called for a clip to be played of Trump\u2019s interview earlier in the day with Fox News\u2019 Harris Faulkner, in which Trump got a laugh from the live audience by comparing himself to Al Capone and insisted his \u201cenemies within\u201d were simply limited to the Democrats who investigated him. That Baier treated Trump\u2019s remark Wednesday morning as believable and an appropriate counter to Harris\u2019 statement is journalistic malpractice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As one of the last remaining \u201chard news\u201d correspondents at Fox News, Baier\u2019s got a reputation as a well-prepared interviewer who doesn\u2019t let politicians get away with filibustering. But compare the intensity of his questioning and fact-checking of Harris against the interview<\/a> Baier conducted with Trump in June 2023. He effectively pressed Trump at times, was deferential at others, but what he didn\u2019t do was carry water for Democrats or regurgitate their talking points.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Harris noted that former Trump administration officials have said Trump is unfit for office, Baier basically acted like a Trump campaign surrogate.<\/p>\n

Harris, for her part, continues to struggle in interviews, holding on to campaign talking points like a life raft. She was particularly unconvincing when asked about President Joe Biden\u2019s declining mental faculties<\/a>. But she had successful moments Wednesday night, mainly when speaking extemporaneously about specific, indefensible things Trump has done and promised to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fox News\u2019 Dana Perino offered a predictable post-interview assessment that Harris \u201ccame in hot and got angrier,\u201d but that\u2019s not how I saw it. She sat for an interview with a network<\/a> on which she\u2019s regularly denigrated as \u201cstupid,\u201d and she responded with a tone appropriate to Baier\u2019s.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure any minds will be changed by this interview, nor was much revealed. But if judging it as a combat sport, the result was inconclusive. Both sides landed punches, but neither one was left raising a championship belt.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CORRECTION<\/strong>\u00a0(Oct. 18, 2024, 12:20 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this article misstated the first name of one of the three women allegedly killed by migrants who crossed the border illegally. She is Jocelyn Nungaray, not Rachel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Anthony L. Fisher<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n
Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and writer for BLN Daily. He was previously the senior opinion editor for The Daily Beast and a politics columnist for Business Insider.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019 sit-down with Fox News\u2019 Bret Baier wasn\u2019t an interview; it was a competition. Baier sought to box Harris into giving no-win answers to what were at times loaded questions. Harris\u2019 goal seemed to be making it through the 30-minute conversation without meandering too often into nondescript word salad answers. I don\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}