Kamala Harris at a recent speech. New York Post/AP.
Kamala Harris sat down with Bret Baier of Fox News in her first challenging interview. New York Post. The 26 minute interview was widely viewed as a failure with Baier asking tough questions on immigration, Iran and the fitness of Joe Biden. Baier confronted Harris on her stance on immigration and told her about several victims of illegal aliens. Harris mostly responded with campaign talking points and though she expressed empathy for the deaths of folks killed by illegal immigrants, she did not take responsibility. Baier also showed Harris an ad from the Trump campaign that said Harris supports tax payer paid gender surgery, which Harris supports. Harris said that Trump had allowed the same surgeries to happen, while Baier said that it hadn't happened during his term at federal prisons. Baier was also critical of the Biden/Harris Iran policy, charging that Harris loosened sanctions, with Harris fired back that Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal. Harris was also confronted on the apparent senility of Joe Biden, but Harris refused to answer the question and again redirected to Donald Trump.
The full Fox News interview can be found at the end of this post.
My Comment:
This interview has been highly criticized on social media with only hardcore Harris supporters saying that she did well. I've been watching it myself, despite the fact that I can't stand her voice, and I think the critics are right. This was not a good interview for Harris.
Why? Largely because Harris did not have good answers. She also talked over Bret Baier and came off as rude. When she did have answers they were mostly talking points. Those were her best moments as at least she was trying to sell herself. They were few and far between and sounded more like canned responses than a genuine discussion.
Much worse is the fact that she kept trying to dodge questions and trying to switch things back to Donald Trump. To the credit with Bret Baier, he didn't let her get away with it, he kept asking the tough questions. When she still refused to answer the questions, most notably when he was confronting her over Joe Biden's senility, she kept dodging. This was terrible as it made her look like she couldn't even answer the question. I can remember her saying so many times "Let's go back to Donald Trump" which was just a joke.
Her answers on immigration were not much better. Harris was confronted, probably for the first time, the name of three women, Jocelyn Nungaray, Rachel Morin, and Laken Riley, killed by illegal immigrants. Though Harris expressed sympathy for the dead, she did not take any responsibility for the deaths, which clearly could have been prevented with a sane immigration policy. Instead she tried to refocus on the bill that was unable to be passed in congress that would not have done much to stop illegal immigration and was DOA in the first place. Voters know Biden could have taken executive action to stop the invasion at the border and failed, so this non-answer is not going to be good for her.
How should she have answered instead? The cowardly move would be to throw Biden under the bus. People may or may not buy it but it would at least been an answer. Another choice would be to accept at least some responsibility and say that they are going to do better. But she choose neither of these and it's going to hurt her.
I also thought that Harris came off as argumentative and bossy. I am sure that some folks will appreciate her talking over the questions Baier was asking but I am not so sure that's a good idea. Harris has serious likability issues and can't get away with being rude like Trump is because Trump has the major advantage of being funny. Harris just came off as mean. Note that Baier also came off as fairly hostile and bossy, but the fact remains he's not running for President, he's just asking the kind of tough questions a presidential candidate should be able to handle without losing her temper. And Harris clearly lost her temper a few times during the interview.
But the real problem is that Harris just didn't seem very smart. She's had weeks to prepare for this kind of interview and should have absolutely known what kind of questions a tough interviewer was going to ask. She should have had some kind of statement prepared for each question or at least have the wherewithal to come up with something. Instead she went into talking points and the already debated to death attacks on Donald Trump. Trump would have been better. So would JD Vance and Tim Walz. Hillary Clinton would have argued circles around Harris. But Harris? She seemed caught off guard and unprepared and had to go back to the Donald Trump well.
Will this interview hurt Harris? It depends. I don't know how many Fox News viewers were even considering voting for her in the first place. But there could be a few "never Trump" Republicans that saw this interview and may decide that Trump isn't so bad after all.
Regardless, the fact that Harris had to go into a hostile interview when interviews are pretty clearly a major weakness for her is a sign that her campaign is getting desperate. The summer of "vibes" is over and Harris has taken a major hit in the polls, to the point where if the polling has zero error whatsoever than Trump wins in an electoral college landslide (capturing all swing states). And if there is an error? Then Trump could win the popular vote as well and perhaps take a couple of blue states like Minnesota, New Mexico and especially Virginia.
This is why Harris has abandoned the Biden-style "campaigning from a basement" campaign effort. It wasn't working so she's been going to interviews everywhere and has even gone on some podcasts. She was even rumored to be going on Joe Rogan, but it would be insane to do that now. She absolutely needed to reset her campaign and try and get herself out there and win people over. But it does not seem to be having a good effect on her and may even be hurting her. Indeed, the more folks see of Kamala the less they like her.
With all that being said, I do think that the social media folks are a bit too harsh on this interview. This was a bad day for Harris but it wasn't the end of her campaign. I don't think too many of her supporters are going to see it. And the folks that watch Fox News aren't going to be voting for Harris anyways. People aren't going to decide who they vote for because of one bad interview. It's going to be domestic issues like the economy and Trump's own good performance that will decide the 2024 election.
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