Opinion | Kamala Harris’ Fox News interview was a combat sport

Vice President Kamala Harris’ sit-down with Fox News’ Bret Baier wasn’t an interview; it was a competition. Baier sought to box Harris into giving no-win answers to what were at times loaded questions. Harris’ goal seemed to be making it through the 30-minute conversation without meandering too often into nondescript word salad answers. I don’t know if I’d call the finished result a draw, but it was definitely no knockout.

Baier jumped right into it, pressing Harris to answer for the Biden administration’s decision to immediately reverse the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases were reviewed by U.S. immigration courts. Baier said the administration’s border policies allowed 6 million undocumented immigrants into the country and asked whether she regrets reversing the policy. Harris tried to pivot, countering that the Biden administration has pushed for immigration reform in Congress since day one. 

It was fair and good journalistic practice for Baier to press the vice president about policies that her own administration seems to understand have failed and that have provided terrible optics to the public. But when Baier repeatedly asked Harris if she felt she owed an apology to the families of Rachel Nungaray, Laken Riley and Rachel Morin — three young women allegedly murdered by migrants who crossed the border illegally — his line of questioning turned into demagoguery. 

Of all the issues to ask the Democratic nominee, Baier then went with a culture war lightning rod, asking if she supports publicly funded trans-affirming surgery for prisoners — the focal point of numerous pro-Trump campaign ads, but hardly the kind of “kitchen table” issue that supposedly motivates the economic populism of Trump’s base. 

When Harris noted that former Trump administration officials have said Trump is unfit for office, Baier basically acted like a Trump campaign surrogate: “If that’s the case, why is half the country supporting him? Why is he beating you in a lot of swing states? Why, if he’s as bad as you say, that half of this country is now supporting this person who could be the 47th president of the United States? Why is that happening?”

Harris replied that the election was never meant to be a cakewalk, to which Baier interjected, “So are they misguided, the 50%? Are they stupid? What is it?” You could practically see the hamster running the wheel inside Baier’s head, hoping like heck for a sound bite to rival Hillary Clinton’s notorious “basket of deplorables” comment in 2016.

But Harris didn’t take the bait, saying she’d never call the American people something like that, and she reminded Baier that Trump’s the one who regularly demeans Americans, such as when he spoke to Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” of “the enemy within.” 

Baier immediately called for a clip to be played of Trump’s interview earlier in the day with Fox News’ Harris Faulkner, in which Trump got a laugh from the live audience by comparing himself to Al Capone and insisted his “enemies within” were simply limited to the Democrats who investigated him. That Baier treated Trump’s remark Wednesday morning as believable and an appropriate counter to Harris’ statement is journalistic malpractice. 

As one of the last remaining “hard news” correspondents at Fox News, Baier’s got a reputation as a well-prepared interviewer who doesn’t let politicians get away with filibustering. But compare the intensity of his questioning and fact-checking of Harris against the interview Baier conducted with Trump in June 2023. He effectively pressed Trump at times, was deferential at others, but what he didn’t do was carry water for Democrats or regurgitate their talking points. 

Harris, for her part, continues to struggle in interviews, holding on to campaign talking points like a life raft. She was particularly unconvincing when asked about President Joe Biden’s declining mental faculties. But she had successful moments Wednesday night, mainly when speaking extemporaneously about specific, indefensible things Trump has done and promised to do. 

Fox News’ Dana Perino offered a predictable post-interview assessment that Harris “came in hot and got angrier,” but that’s not how I saw it. She sat for an interview with a network on which she’s regularly denigrated as “stupid,” and she responded with a tone appropriate to Baier’s.

I’m not sure any minds will be changed by this interview, nor was much revealed. But if judging it as a combat sport, the result was inconclusive. Both sides landed punches, but neither one was left raising a championship belt.