Kamala Harris didn’t get her second debate with Donald Trump — so she went on Fox News instead.
The vice president clashed heatedly with the pro-Trump network’s top anchor Bret Baier on Wednesday night in the kind of adversarial, unscripted scrum that Republicans have long accused her of avoiding.
Harris and Baier squabbled and interrupted one another, as he exposed her policy flip flops and reversals and she rammed home her talking points. The contentious clash, conducted in swing state Pennsylvania, had more in common with the vice president’s sole debate showdown with the former president than forensic, formal interviews where she’s often stumbled.
Vice President Kamala Harris talks to Fox News anchor Bret Baier on October 16, 2024.
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Kamala Harris spars with Fox News anchor in testy interview
“May I please finish, you have to let me finish,” Harris said early in the interview, using a technique she has employed against male rivals in congressional hearings and debates in the past.
The vice president’s trip to Fox News showed how she’s trying to conjure new turning points in a contest with no clear leader and with most swing states regarded as toss-ups. Trump’s decision to decline a second debate with his rival has meant that the final weeks of the campaign lack big scheduled moments that could change the race.
In the end, on Wednesday, both Harris and Fox News probably got what they wanted.
Harris clashes with Fox as she tries to peel away some GOP voters. CNN NEWS
The vice president looked combative after daring to walk into the conservative media lair and struck a contrast with Trump, who is largely avoiding television news interviews in which he will be cross-examined. She singled out his extreme rhetoric and threats to use the military on “enemies from within” — in a way the channel’s viewers rarely see. Her performance bolstered her new campaign tactic of raising fresh alarm about a second Trump term that she said in a speech earlier Wednesday would see the ex-president sit in the Oval Office “plotting retribution, stew in his own grievances and think only about himself and not you.”
Harris also did some damage control after saying in an interview last week that there wasn’t much she would have done differently from the unpopular commander in chief over the past four years. “My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” Harris said. “Like every new president that comes into office, I will bring my life experiences and my professional experiences and fresh and new ideas.”
Fox, meanwhile, got hours of post-interview content for its commentators. Its post-debate analysis, for instance, seized on Harris’ non-answer to one of Trump’s charges — how many undocumented migrants let into the country on her watch. As the network spooled highlights of the interview, it ran a chyron that read “Kamala continues her tirade against Trump.” Baier pressed Harris on issues important to the conservative audience, including tragedies of young American women murdered by undocumented migrants — for whom the vice president expressed deep sympathy — and her previous support for using taxpayer dollars to fund gender-affirming care for transgender inmates, including undocumented immigrants. (She said she would follow the law on such policies as president).
Harris clashes with Fox as she tries to peel away some GOP voters. CNN NEWS
And in case Harris changed the minds of any of its viewers, Fox followed her appearance with searing rebuttals from Trump’s older sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, and his former ultra-hardline political adviser Stephen Miller.
The tightrope that Harris was walking as she sought to show steel and presidential mettle was evident from critiques of her performance on social media that often played into tropes directed at strong, Black women.
But before the interview, Harris spokesman Ian Sams explained her thinking. He noted Fox’s high ratings include some undecided voters and Democrats. And he said that Harris wanted those viewers to hear from her directly.
Another day of courting distinct voting blocs
The Fox interview capped another day Harris used to try to peel away potentially small numbers of voters who could make a difference in tightly fought battlegrounds less than three weeks before the neck-and-neck election.
After courting Black male voters on Tuesday, she traveled to the Keystone State to try and appeal to Republicans who are disaffected with Trump’s anti-democratic behavior. Appearing with Republican former lawmakers and officials driven out of their party by Trump, the vice president noted that finding her in such company would normally be surprising.
But she added, “Not in this election, because at stake in this race are the democratic ideas that our founders and generations of Americans before us have fought for. At stake in this election is the Constitution of the United States.”