Kamala Harris stands tall on Fox News
Bret Baier was desperate to derail her. She emerged unscathed.
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The mainstream media has claimed for months that Kamala Harris refuses to do tough interviews. That’s a talking point that hopefully will be put to rest now, after she sat down for a half-hour interview with Bret Baier where the Fox News host tried desperately (and failed) to create a bad news cycle for Harris.
As you’d expect from Fox, the interview was openly, rabidly partisan. Baier repeatedly interrupted Harris, and even at one point cut away to play her a literal Trump ad for Fox viewers. (Watch below.)
Harris refused to be steamrolled, though. She managed to highlight issues important to her candidacy, and to remind her audience of Trump’s many failures and weaknesses. Baier’s thirst for a gotcha made it a hard interview to watch, but it underlined her determination to reach out to swing voters — a striking contrast with Trump, who’s less and less willing to talk to anyone but true believers.
Trump’s ever more insular campaign
Harris’s Fox interview comes after weeks of Trump running from mainstream interviews, and from questions in general.
Trump’s idea of outreach is to tell Black and Latino Democrats that they need their “head[s] examined.” His latest talking point is that Democrats are “enemies within.” Referencing Adam Schiff and the Pelosis, Trump said during a Fox Business interview that aired Sunday, “If you have a smart president, they can all be handled.” That not very veiled threat is particularly disturbing given the fact that Paul Pelosi, the husband of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, was assaulted with a hammer by a Trump supporter in 2022.
Trump doesn’t do interviews with outlets that disagree with him in part because he’s lazy and dislikes being contradicted. But he also has made it clear that he believes that anyone who would question him is illegitimate, un-American, and deserves whatever they get from his supporters.
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Leaders in a democracy are not supposed to be above questioning. They should try to respond to and address the concerns of even voters who disagree with them, or who vote against them.
“This is a democracy,” Harris said to Baier. “And in a democracy the president of the United States, in the United States of America, should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he'd lock people up for doing it." (Watch below.)
When Harris said that, she was in the middle of trying to handle an interviewer who clearly doing everything possible to throw her off. Baier likes to present himself as a fair, serious anchor rather than as a zealous partisan in the mold of Laura Ingraham or Sean Hannity. But he’s very aware of who his audience is. During the 2020 election, for instance, Baier reportedly urged the network to rescind its accurate call of Arizona for Biden because viewers were upset that Trump lost the election.
Prior to the interview, Baier was under a lot of pressure from conservatives on social media to be tough on Harris. And so he quickly dispensed with any pretense of objectivity.
Baier started off by demanding that Harris state the number of undocumented people the Biden administration had allowed into the country, then flashed onscreen images of young women allegedly murdered by undocumented people. He moved on to literally run chunks of a Trump ad denouncing Harris’s support for trans women participating in sports.
Harris did manage to hold her ground and tell Fox viewers some things they maybe didn’t want to hear. She reminded Baier that Trump had torpedoed a bipartisan border security bill because he wanted to campaign on the issue. She noted that Trump had gutted the diplomatic framework to constrain Iran — and that he had said US soldiers suffering head trauma after an Iranian missile attack just had “headaches.” She pushed back hard when Baier played a clip of Trump lying about his “enemy within” comments. (Watch below.)
And Harris managed to talk about her housing policies and economic policies, even though it was very clear that Baier didn’t want her to.
Showing up is the message
Perhaps the most telling exchange of the interview, though, occurred when Baier tried to push Harris toward a “deplorables” moment by encouraging her to insult Trump supporters.
“So are they misguided, the 50 percent [who are Trump supporters]?” Baier asked. “Are they stupid?”
Harris didn’t take the bait.
“Oh, God. I would never say that about the American people,” she said. “And, in fact, if you listen to Donald Trump, if you watch any of his rallies, he’s the one who tends to demean and belittle and diminish the American people.” (Watch below.)
Harris also — unlike Trump — refused to insult the interviewer she was talking to. Instead, she told him (or perhaps tried to remind him) that he is supposedly a serious journalist.
This was an impressive example of taking the high road. Harris is running for president. And as she says, the president is supposed to treat voters with respect because presidents work for the voters. Presidents are supposed to treat journalists with respect because they’re a vital means of democratic accountability.
Agreeing to talk to Bret Baier and Fox viewers is a way for Harris to say that she sees Baier and Fox viewers as neighbors and fellow Americans. Trump treats his partisan opponents as enemies to destroy and belittle. Harris, by contrast, is coming into the living rooms of Fox viewers to tell them they are part of her community.
Harris’s message was what she said. But her message was also that she showed up. And maybe that will give some people on the fence the excuse they need to choose a better path.
We need to include everyone
Harris wants to reach out to Republicans in part because the electoral college is such that all the swing states are to the right of the US electorate as a whole. Democrats need some support from the right if they are going to win; that’s just the electoral map.
But while trying to find common ground with Republicans, it’s important not to lose sight of the people Republicans have targeted and demonized.
Harris did a good job in the interview of showing respect for Fox viewers, and affirming their place in our democracy. But she notably did not take the opportunity to point out that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than citizens. She said that she would follow the law in ensuring gender affirming care for trans people in prison, but she did not take a moment to affirm the humanity of trans people, or to remind Baier that the government has a moral duty, as well as a legal one, to provide medical care to prisoners.
No doubt Harris was being mindful of her Fox audience. Baier and his viewers wouldn’t welcome a reminder that undocumented people, and trans people, and prisoners are all humans and part of our community, too.
But if we really want to end the politics of division and hate, we need to reach out, not just to haters, but to the people being targeted. Harris did the right thing in going on Fox to tell conservatives she will be the president for everyone. But her campaign, and her presidency, must always foreground the need to remind the groups most under siege from Trumpism that she wants to work for them, too.
That’s it for today
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“As you’d expect from Fox, the interview was openly, rabidly partisan. Baier repeatedly interrupted Harris, and even at one point cut away to play her a literal Trump ad for Fox viewers.”
I couldn’t agree more Noah. Baier is an ASSHOLE and began the interview mansplaining, and eventually got caught in his own web of demented SPIN!
I particularly loved when she called Baier out for the edited clip of Trump’s “enemy within” nonsense, but her best reaction, was when Baier played the clip of the mother who lost a daughter to an undocumented person. She showed restraint, conviction and sympathy for the victim’s family. It was a loaded question which would have derailed most people.
Then Baier had the audacity to ask why half the country supports Trump. First off, it’s 45-46% of the population, not over half. Trump has never won the pop vote. Secondly, perhaps the right question would have been why more than 50% of Americans support Harris?
Ironically, Fox wouldn’t allow Harris to finish a sentence, yet whenever Trump is on Fox, they act like a Trump whisperer; guiding his answers and trying to correct him in realtime. Yet, democrats can’t get a word in edge wise. OUTSTANDING!
Fortunately, the Romney/Haley wing of the party won’t be fooled; especially the women who support the GOP!
Bottom line: Baier is a Trump Troll who bought a $35 million mansion near Mar-aLarDo, and he was the first Fox “so called” journalist to throw a tantrum when Fox’s election team called AZ for Biden in 2020. fair and balanced isn’t even in his vocabulary! Personally, I’m not sure why Harris’s team went with Baier; it was always going to be a deliberate takedown of Harris. That said, given the circumstances; she turned the tables on these clowns and came out smelling like roses! IMHO!…:)
Fox insists that Harris be subjected to the debate that they wish trump could do, while also smothering trump in bubble wrap and fabreeze before delicately rolling him out for everyone to sing happy birthday.