VP #KamalaHarris may not get another debate w/ #Trump, but on Wednesday,she got one w/ #BretBaier.
In an interview that turned contentious almost the instant it began, Baier, #FoxNews’s chief political anchor, repeatedly pressed the Democratic presidential nominee on illegal immigration, taxpayer support for gender-transition surgery & other areas that closely aligned w/Trump’s regular attacks against her.
At one point, Baier wondered if VP #KamalaHarris considered #Trump’s supporters “stupid.” (“I would never say that about the American people,” she replied.) At another point, he asked if she would apologize to the mother of a murdered 12-year-old Texas girl whose death is frequently invoked by Trump because 2 recent Venezuelan migrants were charged w/the crime.
#Baier’s aggressive demeanor was consistent w/the kind of *tough* coverage of #Harris that blankets #FoxNews’s daily programming. Lots of viewers were surely eager to hear how she would respond when confronted head-on.
Frequently, however, Baier did not give viewers that chance. Instead, looking frustrated, he cut off several of Harris’s answers after a few seconds. His first interruption came within the first half-minute of their exchange.
“May I please finish responding?” #Harris asked at one point. “I’m in the middle of responding to the point you’re making, and I’d like to finish.”
A veteran interviewer, and the face of #FoxNews’s relatively nonpartisan 6 p.m. newscast, #Baier was eager to shake Harris off her usual talking points, including playing a Trump campaign ad & asking her to respond.
Still, in his eagerness to prevent a filibuster, Baier’s follow-up questions sometimes resembled rebuttals. Afterward, on a political roundtable w/Fox commentators, #Baier sounded a touch defensive. “I tried to redirect numerous times without interrupting too much, but at some point, you kind of have to redirect to get back in the game,” he said.
Any high-stakes interview is a high-wire act, & #Baier later acknowledged that he had been frustrated before the encounter had even begun. He said the taping had been scheduled to start at 5 p.m., less than an hour before his newscast, & described what he called last-minute shifts by the #Harris campaign.
“We were going to do 25 or 30 mins. They came in & said, ‘Well, maybe 20,’ so it was already getting whittled down,” Baier said. “Then the VP showed up about 5:15. We were pushing the envelope to be able to turn it around for the top of the 6 o’clock. So that’s how it started, & I could tell when we started talking that she was going to be tough to, you know, redirect, w/o me trying to interrupt.”
He said he eventually had “4 people waving their hands” in the room, telling him to wrap up.
For weeks, #Harris has faced criticism for avoiding adversarial meetings w/journalists. (#Trump has mostly done the same.) Agreeing to her first-ever #FoxNews interview was an effort by the Harris campaign to allay those concerns, and to share her viewpoints directly with an audience that may not often hear them.
Her aides declared themselves pleased with the results.
“We feel like we definitely achieved what we set out to achieve, in the sense that she was able to reach an audience that has probably been not exposed to the arguments she’s been making on the trail,” Brian Fallon, #Harris’s campaign communications director, told reporters on Air Force Two. “She also got to show her toughness in standing tall against a hostile interviewer.”
