In a surprise to no one, the Harris campaign’s decision to coddle and hide the Vice President from media — especially fair, non-fawning hosts — was the wrong one. Wednesday evening’s one-on-one with Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier was a masterclass in interviewing by the “Special Report” host and a cautionary tale for campaign strategists who think the eleventh hour is the time to cave to pressure to face fair questioning.
Tougher interviews (read: fair interviews by journalists who haven’t endorsed your candidate) can be rough for any presidential hopeful, especially untested or inexperienced ones. That’s all the more reason, though, to essentially throw a candidate to the wolves in order to find the weak points, force a baptism by fire, and iron out responses on the most damaging topics.
If a campaign does this early on in the process, there are months until most voters are casting their ballots and time to exploit an opponent’s weaknesses while focusing on the candidate becoming a better messenger for themselves.
The Harris team, both as a result of being forced to the top of the ticket by a last-minute coup within the Democrat ranks and believing themselves insulated enough with friendly mainstream outlets, seemingly didn’t try to strengthen their candidate. Certainly, however, they could have accomplished some of this before the final 20 days.
When Harris sat down with Baier on Wednesday, she did worse than expected. Even before its airing, the interview smacked of desperation as Harris watched her poll numbers fall apart in key states and as opinion polls show almost eight-in-ten Americans think the country is moving in the wrong direction under her tenure as vice president.
Despite knowing the topic would come up, Harris’ answer to the first question on the Biden-Harris administration’s failed border crisis-triggering immigration policy was simply not an answer at all. After saying quite unbelievably that she was “glad” Baier “raised the issue,” Harris could only offer that illegal immigration is a topic of discussion that people “rightly” want to have.
Judging by the look on her face at this point just moments into the interview and throughout the rest of her conversation, Harris wished some measure of ill will toward whichever staffer forced her into the hot seat.
Unsurprisingly, Baier seemed to know Harris’ record better than she did. At pretty much every opportunity to make a point, Harris rambled in something of a filibuster attempt and then snippily declared “you have to let me finish.” Ironically, Baier was simply trying to get an answer out of her.
At almost every turn, Harris failed to be precise or specific in any way that would prove beneficial to voters trying to figure out where she actually stands. Instead of explaining her policies, especially those she claims to have abandoned since her failed and short-lived 2019 campaign for president, she only burped up more buzzwords.
While a miscarriage of media strategy in general on the part of Harris and her team, perhaps the most egregious portions came after Baier listed off the names of American women murdered by illegal aliens released into the U.S. under the Biden-Harris administration’s policies.
When pressed the first time about whether she owed the families of these young victims an apology, she said the situations were “tragic” but offered no apology for her administration’s culpability. Essentially. Harris “both-sides’d” the situations by trying to rush past the question of an apology to instead suggest that former President Donald Trump had the more dangerous border plan.
Asked again if she owed victim’s families an apology after playing a clip of congressional testimony from the mother of Jocelyn Nungaray — a 12-year-old girl murdered in Houston by two members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang illegally in the U.S. — Harris refused.
“I’m so sorry for her loss, sincerely” the vice president offered. That’s a far cry from apologizing for overseeing the policy that allowed violent criminal illegal aliens into the country. Again, she nearly scolded her interviewer with a “let’s talk about what is happening right now with an individual who does not want to participate in solutions.”
Rather than contrition, Harris retreated to phony righteous indignation.
Things didn’t improve from there during the interview that Baier later explained was shortened and rushed more than initially agreed to. Harris could not explain why her beliefs changed between 2019 and 2024, failed to offer a coherent answer to questions about her running mate Governor Tim Walz’s decision to sign laws codifying benefits for illegal aliens, and clumsily tried to turn questions around to attack Trump in ways that failed to be remotely convincing.
At other points Harris sought to minimize Americans’ concerns about taxpayer-funded sex change operations for incarcerated illegal aliens as “quite remote” and then proceeded to not-so-slyly insult Americans who overwhelmingly believe a second Trump administration would be better for their economic wellbeing.
According to Harris, it’s “clear to those who study and understand how economic policy works” that her policies — whatever they truly are at present — are superior. Americans who disagree, per Harris, just don’t understand how the economy works. Such infantilizing is insulting and disqualifying.
Part of the brilliance of Baier’s interview is that he was giving the American people a voice to directly ask Harris about their concerns and objections. He wasn’t asking things in an ad hominem manner, he showed an interview clip of an American begging for an apology from Harris for allowing illegal alien murders into the country or referenced a poll indicting Harris’ policies. He wasn’t the source of the questions, he was the vehicle through which the Americans feeling forgotten and ignored finally heard their worries put directly to the woman seemingly running the country who failed to rise to the occasion.