Katie Rogers
Oct. 16,
2024, 8:57 p.m. ETOct. 16, 2024
Nicholas
Nehamas and Katie RogersReporting from Washington
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/10/16/us/trump-harris-election
Here are
six takeaways from Harris’s combative interview on Fox News.
Vice
President Kamala Harris sat for the most adversarial interview of her campaign
on Wednesday, sparring with the Fox News anchor Bret Baier over the border,
President Biden’s mental fitness and whether former President Donald J. Trump
is a threat to American democracy.
For a
Democratic presidential candidate, appearing on Fox News is about as close as
going into the lion’s den as it gets. On Wednesday, the lion was Mr. Baier, who
repeatedly interrupted the vice president and tried to talk over her.
But Ms.
Harris — giving her first interview on Fox News in an attempt to reach millions
of voters, especially conservative-leaning women, who have probably not heard
much of her message — largely steered the conversation in her preferred
direction.
Here are six
takeaways from the interview.
She broke
with Biden (a little).
Ms. Harris
made her clearest effort to separate herself from Mr. Biden after she was asked
how her administration would be different.
“My
presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” she replied,
adding that she represented a different generation of leadership and would
address issues like housing and small businesses in different ways.
Republicans
have seen Ms. Harris’s unwillingness to articulate differences from the
unpopular president as a political gift. In an interview on ABC’s “The View”
last week, she said there was “not a thing that comes to mind” when asked what
she would have done differently from Mr. Biden.
Ms. Harris
has engaged in an awkward dance with her boss, walking a line between being
deferential to their administration’s accomplishments while trying to assert
her own authority. Her answer on Wednesday was more rhetorical than
substantive, but Mr. Biden may have given her the green light to be more
aggressive going forward.
“Every
president has to cut their own path. That’s what I did,” he said in a speech on
Tuesday. “I was loyal to Barack Obama, but I cut my own path as president.
That’s what Kamala’s going to do. She’s been loyal so far, but she’ll cut her
own path.”
And when Mr.
Baier slyly asked her when she had first noticed that “President Biden’s mental
faculties appeared diminished,” she gave little ground, saying Mr. Biden was
more than capable of leading the nation — unlike Mr. Trump, whom she called
“unfit,” “unstable” and “dangerous.”
An
aggressive Bret Baier pushed right-wing arguments.
From the
outset, Mr. Baier seemed determined to knock Ms. Harris off her talking points
— often by echoing those of Mr. Trump.
It took him
less than 20 seconds to interrupt her for the first time. Ms. Harris, who is
known as an effective practitioner of the filibuster, had hardly even begun to
answer his opening question. That pattern continued for much of the interview.
Many of Mr.
Baier’s questions seemed drawn from Mr. Trump’s own arguments. The Fox News
anchor invoked the names of young women whom Mr. Trump frequently points to at
his rallies as victims of undocumented immigrants and who are often cited on
Fox programming. In fact, nearly half of the 26-minute interview was devoted to
immigration and border security, issues seen as among Ms. Harris’s biggest
weaknesses with undecided voters. Mr. Baier also suggested she was soft on
Iran.
At one
point, the Fox anchor came to Mr. Trump’s aid by showing a clip of him
defending himself from criticisms of his “enemy from within” comments. (Ms.
Harris quickly pushed back.) At another, Mr. Baier played a Trump campaign ad
and asked Ms. Harris to respond.
It was a far
cry from the friendlier confines of MSNBC, nonpolitical podcasts and local
radio stations where Ms. Harris has given other interviews.
For
Harris, the interview was largely meant to appeal to women …
The
interview with Mr. Baier gave Ms. Harris access to a large audience of
Republican women whom her campaign is trying to win over. Her advisers believe
there is a sliver of conservative women who might be receptive to the character
contrast she is trying to draw with Mr. Trump — or who are at least willing to
hear her out.
Harris
campaign officials believe that talking about the current landscape of abortion
restrictions in the United States is a winning strategy with female voters,
particularly liberal and liberal-leaning ones. But Mr. Baier did not bring up
the issue, and the vice president did not guide him there.
Instead,
both of them stayed focused on immigration and border security — a topic that,
according to recent polls, is near the top of the list of concerns among female
voters.
At several
points, Mr. Baier asked the vice president if the families of women killed by
undocumented immigrants were owed apologies from Ms. Harris and the Biden
administration. He read off their names from a list, one by one, and played a
clip from the mother of one of the victims, who blamed the administration’s
border policies for the loss of her daughter.
At every
turn, Ms. Harris paused to express her condolences. But she repeatedly
redirected the conversation back to Mr. Trump’s work to sabotage a bipartisan
border bill that would have amounted to the toughest restrictions in years, and
pointed out that she was the only candidate running who had prosecuted
criminals, including members of cartels.
“Let’s talk
about what is happening right now with an individual who does not want to
participate in solutions,” Ms. Harris said of Mr. Trump.
… and those
women saw the vice president being interrupted repeatedly.
During this
portion and others, the viewers Ms. Harris and her campaign are trying to
appeal to also saw Mr. Baier repeatedly interrupt her as she tried to answer
his questions.
The
back-and-forth recalled how Matt Lauer talked over Hillary Clinton during a
televised NBC News forum in 2016. Mr. Lauer was roundly criticized for being
sexist.
“You have to
let me finish, please,” Ms. Harris said at one point during the exchange on
immigration. “I’m in the middle of responding to the point you’re raising, and
I’d like to finish.”
As Mr.
Baier’s interview with Ms. Harris progressed on Wednesday, he seemed more
willing to let her have her say.
“We’re
talking over each other,” he said shortly before it ended, though he had been
doing so himself throughout their encounter. “I apologize.”
The
interview showed the limits of her outreach to Republicans.
Ms. Harris
frequently made points that Fox News viewers don’t often hear in their normal
programming, saying that Mr. Trump was unfit to serve and pointing out the
number of former officials in his administration who support her candidacy.
But the
interview was a reminder that even as she talks in speeches about establishing
a cross-party dialogue — and campaigns with Republicans like former
Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger — the vast majority of the
Republican Party and its media ecosystem view her with skepticism bordering on
contempt and stand firmly behind their chosen candidate.
At the same
time, some younger and progressive Democrats have watched warily as Ms. Harris
goes to great lengths to court moderate and conservative voters — a
general-election strategy that is common but still carries the risk of
dampening liberal enthusiasm.
Mr. Trump’s
campaign later trolled Ms. Harris by sharing the whole interview on social
media, referring to it as his latest campaign ad.
Harris
flipped a Trump transgender attack back on him.
Mr. Trump
has tried to hammer Ms. Harris over her past support for prisoners receiving
gender transition care. The Trump ad that Mr. Baier played for Ms. Harris —
which many Republicans see as one of the former president’s most effective —
said that she was in favor of “taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners” and
“illegal aliens.”
Ms. Harris
quickly sought to turn the tables.
“I will
follow the law, and it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed,” she said
with a wide smile, pointing out that federal prison officials under Mr. Trump
provided an array of gender-affirming treatments, including hormone therapy,
for a small group of inmates who requested it during his term in office.
Transgender
inmates are among the most vulnerable people in federal prisons, and have
received significant protections from the courts.
“Frankly,
that ad from the Trump campaign is a little bit of like throwing stones when
you’re living in a glass house,” Ms. Harris said.
Reporting
was contributed by Lisa Lerer, Reid J. Epstein, Glenn Thrush and Michael M.
Grynbaum.
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