Campaign gamble seems ill-advised in retrospect as Democrats complain of Brett Baier’s ‘rude’ questioning

Vice President Kamala Harris and her campaign staff could not have expected her to perform well in an interview with Bret Baier on Fox News. Couldn’t they? The candidate performed as many expected. It’s no wonder her aides were so desperate to end it. Harris was repeatedly flustered while attempting to recite talking points as Baier interjected with fact checks and follow ups—standard fare for every Republican politician who appears on “mainstream” networks. She attacked Donald Trump for refusing to “take responsible [sic] for what happened in [his] administration” yet refused to take responsibility for the American public’s overwhelming displeasure after nearly four years under the Biden-Harris administration.

Throughout the exchange, which grew combative at times, Harris repeated campaign talking points about how Americans were “ready to turn the page” and “chart a new way forward” as if Trump was currently in charge. Baier asked why Harris, who actually was in charge, would say that. Harris’s response quickly went off the rails and ended with an awkward exchange reminiscent of the infamous NBC News interview in which she struggled to explain why she hadn’t been to the border.

“Well, first of all, turning the page from the last decade in which we have been burdened with the kind of rhetoric coming from Donald Trump that has been designed and implemented to divide our country,” she said. Baier pointed out once again that Harris, not Trump, was currently in office. “And Donald Trump has been running for office since, come on, you and I both know what I’m talking about,” Harris replied. (Baier made clear that he did not.)

On the topic of the border, Harris dodged nearly all of Baier’s questions about the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to loosen restrictions on illegal immigration. She repeated familiar talking points about her preference for fixing problems rather than not fixing them. “This is rightly a discussion that the American people want to have, and what they want are solutions,” Harris said. The Fox News host pressed Harris for a specific answer on whether her administration bore any responsibility for the border crisis, which led to a number of snappy retorts from the sitting VP: “I’m not finished” and “May I finish responding, please?”

Harris repudiated a number of her earlier positions, from her support for decriminalizing undocumented immigration to her endorsement of taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal immigrants. “Listen, that was five years ago, and I’m very clear that I will follow the law,” she said. “We are very clear, and I am very clear, as is Tim Walz, that we must support and enforce federal law.” Harris went on to imply that following the law would mean continuing the taxpayer funding of sex change operations for prisoners and detained illegal immigrants.

The vice president acknowledged feeling “awful” for the families of American children who were murdered by illegal immigrants who entered the country on her watch but did not address Baier’s question about whether she owed those families an apology. The question was prompted by former president Bill Clinton’s recent comments about Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Georgia nursing student murdered by an illegal immigrant who entered the country under the Biden-Harris administration. Riley’s death “probably wouldn’t have happened,” Clinton said, if the killer had been “properly vetted.”

Harris declined to accept responsibility for the Biden-Harris administration’s record but again failed to explain what she would do differently as president. “Let me be very clear,” she said. “My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency.” How so, exactly? Harris continued: “Like every new president that comes into office I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences, and fresh and new ideas.” She urged Americans to visit her campaign website and review the “80 pages of policies that are quite comprehensive.” In fact, the vast majority of Harris’s website content was initially found to have been copied directly from the Biden campaign.

“Let’s go back to Donald Trump,” Harris said at one point, a more explicit version of the point she kept trying to make throughout the interview. She assailed the former president as “unfit” and “unstable.” She appeared, however briefly, to hit her stride while growing increasingly agitated at Baier’s refusing to sit back and absorb her talking points. “In a democracy, the president of the United States of America should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he would lock people up for doing it,” Harris seethed. “Let’s not diminish the significance of that.”

Baier finally asked an obvious question Harris had yet to encounter during her recent gaffe-plagued media blitz. When did she realize Joe Biden, 81, was no longer fit to serve another four years as president? Harris seemed somewhat surprised by the question and did her best to pivot back to Trump. “Joe Biden I have watched from the Oval Office to the Situation Room, and he has the judgment and the experience to do exactly what he has done in making very important decisions on behalf of the American people,” Harris said. “Brett, Joe Biden’s not on the ballot, and Donald Trump is … I think the American people have a concern about Donald Trump.”

Harris’s embrace of negative attacks on her opponent marked a significant departure from the early stages of the campaign, when the Washington Post touted her “joyful message” in contrast to Trump’s “dark and dystopian vision.” Polls show the two candidates neck-and-neck heading into the final stretch of the campaign, which inspired predictable panic among mainstream journalists, many of whom criticized Baier’s handling of the interview. “He was shockingly rude,” MSNBC host Joe Scarborough whined.