U.S. Vice-President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign event in Washington Crossing, Pa., on Oct. 16.RYAN COLLERD/AFP/Getty Images
Vice-President Kamala Harris sat for the most adversarial interview of her campaign Wednesday, sparring with Fox News anchor Bret Baier over the U.S. border, President Joe Biden’s mental fitness and whether former president Donald Trump is a threat to American democracy.
For a Democratic presidential candidate, appearing on Fox News is about as close as going into the lion’s den as it gets. On Wednesday, the lion was Baier, who repeatedly interrupted the vice-president and tried to talk over her.
But Harris – giving her first interview on Fox News in an attempt to reach millions of voters, especially conservative-leaning women, who have probably not heard much of her message – largely steered the conversation in her preferred direction.
Here are six take-aways from the interview.
She broke with Biden (a little)
Harris made her clearest effort to separate herself from Biden after she was asked how her administration would be different.
“My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” she replied, adding that she represented a different generation of leadership and would address issues such as housing and small businesses in different ways.
Republicans have seen Harris’s unwillingness to articulate differences from the unpopular president as a political gift. In an interview on ABC’s “The View” last week, she said there was “not a thing that comes to mind” when asked what she would have done differently from Biden.
Harris has engaged in an awkward dance with her boss, walking a line between being deferential to their administration’s accomplishments while trying to assert her own authority. Her answer Wednesday was more rhetorical than substantive, but Biden may have given her the green light to be more aggressive going forward.
“Every president has to cut their own path. That’s what I did,” he said in a speech Tuesday. “I was loyal to Barack Obama, but I cut my own path as president. That’s what Kamala’s going to do. She’s been loyal so far, but she’ll cut her own path.”
And when Baier slyly asked her when she had first noticed that “President Biden’s mental faculties appeared diminished,” she gave little ground, saying Biden was more than capable of leading the nation – unlike Trump, whom she called “unfit,” “unstable” and “dangerous.”
An aggressive Bret Baier pushed right-wing arguments
From the outset, Baier seemed determined to knock Harris off her talking points – often by echoing those of Trump.
It took him less than 20 seconds to interrupt her for the first time. Harris, who is known as an effective practitioner of the filibuster, had hardly even begun to answer his opening question. That pattern continued for much of the interview.
Many of Baier’s questions seemed drawn from Trump’s own arguments. The Fox News anchor invoked the names of young women whom Trump frequently points to at his rallies as victims of immigrants in the U.S. illegally and who are often cited on Fox programming. In fact, nearly half of the 26-minute interview was devoted to immigration and border security, issues seen as among Harris’s biggest weaknesses with undecided voters. Baier also suggested she was soft on Iran.
At one point, the Fox anchor came to Trump’s aid by showing a clip of him defending himself from criticisms of his “enemy from within” comments. (Harris quickly pushed back.) At another, Baier played a Trump campaign ad and asked Harris to respond.
It was a far cry from the friendlier confines of MSNBC, non-political podcasts and local radio stations where Harris has given other interviews.
For Harris, the interview was largely meant to appeal to women …
The interview with Baier gave Harris access to a large audience of Republican women whom her campaign is trying to win over. Her advisers believe there is a sliver of conservative women who might be receptive to the character contrast she is trying to draw with Trump – or who are at least willing to hear her out.
Harris campaign officials believe that talking about the current landscape of abortion restrictions in the United States is a winning strategy with female voters, particularly liberal and liberal-leaning ones. But Baier did not bring up the issue, and the vice-president did not guide him there.
Instead, both of them stayed focused on immigration and border security – a topic that, according to recent polls, is near the top of the list of concerns among female voters.
At several points, Baier asked the vice-president if the families of women killed by immigrants in the country illegally were owed apologies from Harris and the Biden administration. He read off their names from a list, one by one, and played a clip from the mother of one of the victims, who blamed the administration’s border policies for the loss of her daughter.
At every turn, Harris paused to express her condolences. But she repeatedly redirected the conversation back to Trump’s work to sabotage a bipartisan border bill that would have amounted to the toughest restrictions in years, and pointed out that she was the only candidate running who had prosecuted criminals, including members of cartels.
“Let’s talk about what is happening right now with an individual who does not want to participate in solutions,” Harris said of Trump.
… and those women saw the vice-president being interrupted repeatedly
During this portion and others, the viewers Harris and her campaign are trying to appeal to also saw Baier repeatedly interrupt her as she tried to answer his questions.
The back-and-forth recalled how Matt Lauer talked over Hillary Clinton during a televised NBC News forum in 2016. Lauer was roundly criticized for being sexist.
“You have to let me finish, please,” Harris said at one point during the exchange on immigration. “I’m in the middle of responding to the point you’re raising, and I’d like to finish.”
As Baier’s interview with Harris progressed Wednesday, he seemed more willing to let her have her say.
“We’re talking over each other,” he said shortly before it ended, though he had been doing so himself throughout their encounter. “I apologize.”
The interview showed the limits of Harris’s outreach to Republicans
Harris frequently made points that Fox News viewers don’t often hear in their normal programming, saying that Trump was unfit to serve and pointing out the number of former officials in his administration who support her candidacy.
But the interview was a reminder that even as she talks in speeches about establishing a cross-party dialogue – and campaigns with Republicans like former Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger – the vast majority of the Republican Party and its media ecosystem view her with skepticism bordering on contempt and stand firmly behind their chosen candidate.
At the same time, some younger and progressive Democrats have watched warily as Harris goes to great lengths to court moderate and conservative voters – a general-election strategy that is common but still carries the risk of dampening liberal enthusiasm.
Trump’s campaign later trolled Harris by sharing the whole interview on social media, referring to it as his latest campaign ad.
Harris flipped a Trump transgender attack back on him
Trump has tried to hammer Harris over her past support for prisoners receiving gender transition care. The Trump ad that Baier played for Harris – which many Republicans see as one of the former president’s most effective – said that she was in favour of “taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners” and “illegal aliens.”
Harris quickly sought to turn the tables.
“I will follow the law, and it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed,” she said with a wide smile, pointing out that federal prison officials under Trump provided an array of gender-affirming treatments, including hormone therapy, for a small group of inmates who requested it during his term in office.
Transgender inmates are among the most vulnerable people in federal prisons, and have received significant protections from the courts.
“Frankly, that ad from the Trump campaign is a little bit of like throwing stones when you’re living in a glass house,” Harris said.