Rex Huppke, USA TODAY
Updated Thu, October 17, 2024
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris went into America’s Den of Misinformation – Fox News – for a Wednesday night interview that demonstrated two things:
She has far more guts than her opponent, Donald Trump.
Fox News remains an arm of the Republican Party.
For starters, Harris deserves credit for doing an interview she and her campaign had to know would be a string of “gotcha” questions and attempts to get her to say mean things about Trump supporters, a la Hillary Clinton’s infamous-but-accurate “basket of deplorables.”
Trump, by comparison, has cancelled a planned CNBC interview and refused to follow Harris’ lead and go on “60 Minutes,” preferring to do things like his Wednesday’s Fox News town hall where he was asked coddling questions before a room full of Trump supporters.
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris campaigns in Washington Crossing, Pa., on Oct. 16, 2024.
Fox News host Bret Baier constantly interrupted Kamala Harris in interview
So points go to Harris in the courage department, while Trump maintains his “weak man who pretends he’s tough” image.
Fox News host Bret Baier was the chosen questioner for Harris’ interview, and he behaved very much like a man with little respect for what a powerful woman has to say. His questions were pointed, which is fine, and he relentlessly asked follow-up question, which is also fine. But Baier barely let the sitting vice president get a word in edgewise, talking over her constantly throughout the interview, interrupting her over and over again.
Fox News anchor Bret Baier pleads with the crowd to quiet down to keep things moving at Fiserv Forum during the first 2023 Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023.
Baier went after Harris with a persistence and viciousness his network has never come close to using on Trump.
Trump fans and his many minions at Fox News will undoubtedly say Harris failed miserably, but the truth, for people operating outside the bubble of insanity, is she more than held her own in a wildly adversarial situation.
Harris called out Fox News' disingenuous Trump clip
At one point Baier showed a clip – ironically from an earlier softball Fox News interview of Trump – in which the former president tried to downplay his recent unhinged ramblings about how Americans who don’t support him are “the enemy from within.”
Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump visits Fox News broadcaster Harris Faulkner for a townhall event on Oct. 15, 2024 in Cumming, Ga.
Harris swiftly called Baier out: “I’m sorry and, with all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about the enemy within, that he has repeated when he’s speaking about the American people. That’s not what you just showed.”
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Would Fox ever ask Trump questions like these? Of course not.
During her answer to the interview’s first question, Baier interrupted Harris six times, incessantly talking over her.
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The questions were justifiably tough, and the vice president absolutely dodged several of the harder callouts on the Biden administration’s immigration policies. But what the interview showed is Harris can more than hold her own in a wildly hostile environment, something most people already knew but Fox News viewers willing to be honest with themselves probably were surprised to see.
Above all, though, what matters is Harris sat there and took it. She went into a Fox News interview – which in and of itself is a sign her campaign is confident and is looking to expand her reach to conservative and independent voters – and she didn’t storm out. She didn’t whine about or insult the interviewer for asking tough questions.
That’s a lot more than anyone can say about Donald Trump.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on X, formerly Twitter, @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
Opinion
"He's a hack": Fox News' Bret Baier called out for confronting Harris with deceptively-edited clip
Charles R. Davis
SALON
Thu, October 17, 2024
Bret Baier Shannon Finney/Getty Images
In 2020, Fox News personality Bret Baier privately worried that his network was losing viewers to other outlets even more willing to air Donald Trump’s lies about an election that he’d lost, especially since his employer had been the first to call Arizona for President Joe Biden.
“I have pressed them to slow. And I think they will slow walk Nevada,” Baier assured Tucker Carlson in a text message, made public as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit over Fox News knowingly airing false claims about the last presidential contest.
It was no surprise, then, that Baier acted more like a Republican partisan than a legitimate journalist during Wednesday’s prime-time interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. As The New York Times put in a headline, the Democratic nominee “Arrived for a Fox Interview. She Got a Debate.”
From the start, Baier was not just adversarial — as would be expected and indeed appropriate: Harris, a grown woman seeking the most powerful office in the world, can answer a tough question or two — but acting as a “surrogate” for the Trump campaign, as one media critic put it. On immigration, he asked her to estimate how many asylum-seekers the Biden administration had released in the United States with court dates.
“Just a number: Do you think it’s one million? Three million?” he asked.
Baier then repeatedly interrupted her as she tried to discuss Democrats’ efforts to reform a “broken” immigration system.
“I was beginning to answer,” Harris said while Baier, in the words of USA Today, “spoke over the vice president.”
“Our focus has been on fixing a problem,” Harris continued as Baier quizzed her about a murder allegedly carried out by a man from Venezuela (studies have repeatedly shown that immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans).
The vice president then discussed efforts earlier this year to pass a bipartisan immigration bill that would have limited the ability to apply for asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border while also increasing funding to process those requests; the American Immigration Council, while critical of the asylum restrictions, described the legislation as “a serious attempt to acknowledge, and solve, some of the key problems with current border and asylum policy.”
"Let me just finish," Harris told Baier. "Donald Trump learned about that bill and told them to kill it because he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem,” she said, a claim confirmed by Senate Republicans.
In another notable exchange, Harris noted Trump’s call to turn the U.S. military on “the enemy from within.”
“An enemy within — talking about the American people,” Harris said, “suggesting he would turn the American military on the American people.”
“We asked that question to the former president today,” Baier interjected, airing a clip from Trump’s Fox News town hall. The clip Baier then aired was deceptively edited, omitting Trump doubling down on his rhetoric about “the enemy from within” and clarification that he is indeed talking about Democrats and others: “the Pelosis, these people, they’re so sick and they’re so evil.”
“I’m not threatening anybody,” Trump said in the clip Baier presented. “They’re the ones doing the threatening.”
“Bret, I’m sorry, and with all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about the enemy within, that he has repeated when he is speaking about the American people. That’s not what you just showed,” Harris responded, continuing:
“Here’s the bottom line: He has repeated it many times, and you and I both know that. And you and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people. He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest. He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him. This is a democracy 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 would lock people up for doing it.”
Trump, in fact, cannot even handle a question from Baier: Earlier this month, he declined to join Harris in a debate that would have been moderated by the Fox News anchor and his colleague, Martha McCallum. “I’d love to have somebody else other than Martha and Bret,” Trump said last month, before rejecting the possibility of another showdown altogether.
On Wednesday, however, Trump was all praise for a man he’d previously called “soft” and “nasty.”
“Great job by Bret Baier in his Interview with Lyin’ Kamala Harris,” Trump wrote in a lengthy post on social media.
Others were less fawning.
“It immediately devolved into an embarrassing, bad-faith effort by a once respected host to play to an audience of one,” MSNBC anchor Mika Brezinski commented Thursday morning. "The host's constant, rude interruptions were designed to distract from the issues and facts that Trump and his acolytes try and twist and distort every day and, on Fox News, they try and avoid.”
Baier’s former Fox News colleagues were just as scathing.
“Baier showed, again, he’s not a ‘straight news’ anchor. He’s a hack,” an ex-Fox News producer told media reporter Justin Baragona, likening him to the network’s openly partisan anchors like Sean Hannity and Jesse Watters. As in 2020, “He bowed to the pressure from his MAGA fans because he doesn’t care as long as they don’t change the channel.”
4 takeaways from Harris’s interview on Fox News
Katie Mather
·Reporter
Wed, October 16, 2024
Kamala Harris at a campaign event in Pennsylvania on Wednesday. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Vice President Kamala Harris continued her media blitz on Wednesday evening with a contentious interview on Fox News, her first appearance on the right-leaning network.
The 30-minute interview with chief political reporter Bret Baier started on a tense note, with Baier asking Harris to estimate how many “illegal immigrants” she thought the Biden administration had “released into the country in the last three-and-a-half years.”
As Harris began her answer, Baier repeatedly interrupted her in an attempt to have her provide a hard number.
“I’m in the middle of responding to the point you’re raising,” Harris told Baier. “I’d like to finish.”
From there, the clashes continued. Here are some of the major takeaways from the interview.
Harris denies she wants to decriminalize unauthorized border crossings
During the initial back-and-forth on the subject of immigration and border security, Harris said she did not and does not support decriminalizing unauthorized border crossings into the United States.
"We have a broken immigration system that needs to be repaired," she told Baier. “I am very clear — as is Tim Walz — that we must support and enforce federal law, and that’s what we will do.”
Harris also went after Trump for opposing a bipartisan border security proposal, saying the former president would rather “run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”
Baier highlighted the cases of Jocelyn Nungaray, Laken Riley and Rachel Morin, all young women who were allegedly killed by men who came to the U.S. illegally and who are frequently referenced during Trump rallies.
“Do you owe these families an apology?” Baier asked Harris.
“Those are tragic cases. There’s no question about that,” she responded. “It is also true that if a border security [bill] had actually been passed nine months ago, it would be nine months we would have had more border agents at the border, more support for the folks who are working around the clock trying to hold it all together to ensure that no future harm would occur.”
Harris: ‘I will follow the law’ on gender-affirming surgery for transgender inmates
During one exchange, Baier played portions of a Trump campaign ad that sharply criticizes Harris over her past support for using taxpayer funds for gender-affirming surgery for transgender inmates, including those who are undocumented.
When asked by Baier if she still supported the idea, Harris said, “I will follow the law.”
“It’s actually a law Donald Trump followed,” she added. “Under Donald Trump’s administration, these surgeries were available to — on a medically necessary basis — to people in the federal prison system. And I think that ad from the Trump campaign is a little bit of throwing stones when you live in a glass house.”
The federal law has been in effect since February 2018. While the Trump administration stiffened treatment guidelines previously set by the Obama administration for who is eligible for transgender surgery, it remained available during Trump’s presidency.
Baier pointed out that “Trump aides” have said that no surgeries happened during his presidency, which is true — the first operation was in 2022. Still, Harris shot back that Trump was trying to scare voters with the ad.
“[Trump] spent $20 million on those ads trying to create a sense of fear in the voters because he actually has no plan in this election that is about focusing on the needs of the American people,” Harris said.
Harris calls out Baier for playing misleading Trump clip
After mentioning that Trump and Harris are neck and neck in the polls, Baier asked Harris whether she thinks the 50% of Americans siding with Trump are “misguided” or “stupid.”
“I would never say that about the American people,” Harris replied. “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. He’s the one who talks about an ‘enemy within.’”
Baier followed up, saying Fox News host Harris Faulkner asked Trump about that particular quote during a town hall that aired on the network earlier Wednesday. He then played a clip of Trump responding to Faulkner, saying, “I’m not threatening anybody.”
“Bret, I’m sorry, and with all due respect: That clip is not what he has been saying about the ‘enemy within’ that he has repeated when he is speaking about the American people,” Harris said after the video played. “That’s not what you just showed.”
“He has repeated it many times, and you and I both know that,” she continued. “You and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people.”
A Harris presidency ‘will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s’
Baier played clips from two of Harris’s recent interviews where she’s asked about what she’ll do differently from the Biden administration, including an Oct. 8 interview on The View during which she responded, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”
On Wednesday, Harris was more forceful in distancing herself from Biden.
"Let me be very clear: My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden's presidency,” Harris told Baier. “Like every new president that comes into office, I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences, and fresh and new ideas. I represent a new generation of leadership."
Baier also pressed Harris about her previous advocacy for Biden’s mental fitness for office before he ended his reelection campaign. Harris reiterated that Biden has the “judgment” and “experience” to be president and then turned the question around to be about Trump.
“Joe Biden is not on the ballot, Donald Trump is,” she said. “He's unfit to serve. He's unstable. He's dangerous. And people are exhausted.”
Harris interview with Fox News showcases a change in strategy for Democrats with network
DAVID BAUDER
Updated Wed, October 16, 2024
Moderators Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier appear before Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks during a Fox News Channel town hall in Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Kamala Harris ' interview with Fox News Channel's Bret Baier on Wednesday is the latest indication that Democrats during this campaign are increasingly willing to engage with a network well-stocked with supporters of opponent Donald Trump.
Since the party's convention in August, roughly twice as many Democrats have been on Fox than during the same period in President Joe Biden's 2020 campaign, which itself was more often than when Hillary Clinton was the nominee in 2016, according to the network.
Whether to ignore Fox or seize opportunities to change the viewpoints of some audience members has long been a subject of internal debate among Democrats. Biden didn't make a Fox-specific appearance during his campaign. Clinton made one appearance during her primary campaign and another in mid-summer 2016.
“The vice president, Governor Walz and our campaign believe it is important to speak to all Americans, wherever they are getting their information or entertainment, so they can hear directly from us — not through a filter — who Vice President Harris is, what she stands for and what she's running to do,” said Ian Sams, Harris campaign spokesman.
Not just Democrats are seeing the new faces on Fox News
Guess who's noticed?
Trump grumbled on his social media feed this week about Sams, who was interviewed Wednesday on Fox by Dana Perino, Tuesday by Martha MacCallum and Monday by Neil Cavuto. Trump said Sams “virtually owns the network.”
“It's not worthwhile doing interviews on Fox because it all just averages out into NOTHING,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Fox News has totally lost its way.”
Trump on Wednesday appeared on Fox, hours before Harris, in a pre-taped town hall meeting featuring female voters and hosted by Harris Faulkner.
Baier's interview with Harris was combative, starting with a discussion on immigration and touching on the economy, the Biden administration and polls showing Americans think the nation is on the wrong track. At times they seemed to be talking past each other.
“I'm in the middle of responding to the point you're raising and I'd like to finish,” Harris said at one point.
Harris' running mate, Tim Walz, has appeared two weeks in a row on “Fox News Sunday,” which runs on both broadcast and cable. Host Shannon Bream said she was “a little bit surprised” when the Democratic campaign reached out prior to his appearance this past Sunday.
“I think folks are still undecided out there,” Walz replied. “I appreciate you. You ask good, hard questions and your viewers get a chance to hear.”
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was something of a “Fox whisperer” earlier in the campaign, seeming to relish mixing it up with network anchors to the point where he opened his Democratic convention speech by saying, “I'm Pete Buttigieg and you might recognize me from Fox News.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Reps. Jared Moskowitz of Florida and Ro Khanna of California are among the other Democrats who have made multiple appearances.
The Fox guest shots are largely confined to daytime and, like Bream's show, weekend hours. Democrats are seldom seen on prime-time shows hosted by Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity and Greg Gutfeld.
While it usually doesn't make sense for a Democrat to go on a network fully committed to their defeat, this is an exception, said Dan Pfeiffer, co-host of “Pod Save America” and former aide to President Barack Obama. “A Democrat going into enemy territory is a great way to get attention and soft Republicans and Republican-leaning independents is a top target for her campaign,” he said.
Fox also argues that it has more independent and Democratic viewers than most people think. Its audience size alone makes it tough to ignore: Fox's share of the cable news audience is more than CNN and MSNBC combined in all of the swing states except Nevada.
What Harris was facing in Fox's Bret Baier
Baier hosts a 6 p.m. news hour on Fox and, with MacCallum, generally co-hosts most of Fox's big news events. “I would expect what you pretty much get with Baier: strong, tough questions with aggressive follow-up. In a word: fair," wrote Tom Jones in the Poynter Institute journalism newsletter on Wednesday.
Yet Baier is also keenly aware of the network's audience, sometimes to his detriment. Court papers in a lawsuit against Fox News for spreading false stories about an elections technology firm after the 2020 election revealed that Baier privately urged Fox's controversial — and ultimately correct — call of Biden's win in Arizona be overturned.
Trump said on Truth Social that he would have preferred a more hard-hitting journalist conduct the Harris interview, saying Baier “is often very soft on those in the 'cocktail circuit' Left.”
In the days before his interview with Harris, Baier took to social media to tamp down suspicions expressed by some Fox viewers.
“No doubt she already has the list of questions. I don't trust him,” wrote one user on X, which Baier retweeted with an answer: “No one has the questions. Except me.”
To others who suspected the interview might be edited, he insisted it would be taped at 5:30 p.m. Eastern — the time the Harris campaign gave for the interview — and shown in its entirety on his show shortly after.
___
David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.
How to watch the Kamala Harris interview with Fox News if you missed it live
Lucas Frau, NorthJersey.com
Thu, October 17, 2024
The interview aired on the Fox News program "Special Report" at 5 p.m. E.T. You can watch the full interview on the Fox News website or on the channel's YouTube page. You do not need cable to watch the interview on either of the options.
Vice President Kamala Harris sat down with Fox News on Wednesday evening for an interview just a few weeks before the 2024 presidential election.
Who hosted the Fox News interview with Kamala Harris?
Harris spoke with Bret Baier, who hosts the program "Special Report." He has been the host of the program since 2008. The interview lasted just under a half-hour, and was taped one hour before the official airing Wednesday evening.
Talking points for Kamala Harris interview with Fox News
The vice president and Baier spoke about a number of topics including immigration, the economy, and the difference between her and President Joe Biden.
Immigration was a key subject that dominated the conversation throughout several points. Baier notably interrupted Harris several times during these parts of the interview, including within the first minute of the interview.
Harris emphasized immigration is a priority in her presidential campaign. She said the Biden administration offered a immigration bill and argued Trump "told them to kill it because he preferred a run-on problem." Baier would point out six Democrats voted against the bill.
Harris has been on a tour of interviews where she had conversations with a number of different hosts. Earlier this week she sat down with radio host Charlamagne tha God on his show "The Breakfast Club."
The show "60 minutes" held an interview with Harris last week. The CBS program can be viewed on YouTube.
Social media influencer Alex Cooper interviewed Harris on her podcast "Call Her Daddy" which is available exclusively on Spotify, where most the conversation centered around women and health care issues such as abortion.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Kamala Harris interview on Fox News: How to stream it
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