Vice President Harris and Fox News host Bret Baier battled Wednesday evening in a 30-minute encounter that looked more like a debate at times than an interview.
Baier asked Harris some of the toughest questions she’s encountered since becoming the Democratic nominee for president but often cut her off before she could give a full answer.
At one point, Baier played a portion of former President Trump’s remarks from a previous town hall on Fox that Harris ripped for being deceptively edited.
The interruptions and cross talk at times left it hard for viewers to keep up with the content of the conversation. But Harris and her team left the interview happy with the outcome.
Here’s why.
Harris can now say she walked into the lion’s den
Harris has repeatedly been criticized by Trump and others for an unwillingness to sit for tough interviews. On Wednesday, her campaign said she clearly had done so.
“We feel like we definitely achieved what we set out to achieve in the sense that she was able to reach an audience that is probably been not exposed to the arguments she’s been making on the trail and she also got to show her toughness in standing tall against a hostile interviewer,” Brian Fallon, a Harris campaign communications adviser, told reporters after the interview.
Doing the Fox interview was a risky move — and one Harris had previously avoided.
Yet Harris is trying to win over the sliver of Republican voters who do not want to vote for Trump, and many of them watch Fox News.
“Jousting with a major Fox star helps rebut the justified criticism that she has refused tough questions,” said C. Stewart Verdery Jr., a former President George W. Bush administration official. “She was able to get her arguments on key issues in front of a major audience — if it moves even one in a 1,000 voters, that matters.”
In the constant battle between the campaigns over who is more willing to sit for tough interviews, it gives Harris something to point to. Trump earlier in the week had a fairly antagonistic interview himself with Bloomberg.
“Tactically, Harris can score points by highlighting the Baier interview to show she is not afraid to go into red territory and take hard questions, while Trump hides and ducks debates and tough interviews,” said Jim Kessler, co-founder of the left-center think tank Third Way.
Winning female voters
Harris is leading Trump among female voters, but she needs to drive up those margins.
The Fox interview, including the parts where Baier cut off Harris and she asked to speak, could help her in this regard. She showed a tougher side, standing her ground and often sparring about immigration, President Biden’s fitness and Trump’s rhetoric.
It’s impossible to say whether some female voters who watch clips of the exchanges will be more inclined to back Harris because of the way she handled Baier. But it’s possible.
Billionaire investor Mark Cuban, a Harris ally, commended the vice president for standing up to Baier and not backing down while he pushed her, suggesting that Trump would have handled a contentious interview differently.
“She used examples of policies. She gave real world context,” Cuban said on social platform X. “When [Baier] went hard after her. She didn’t call him names. She didn’t quit the interview. She didn’t make things up. She never once complained the questions were tough. She never played the victim card. She didn’t lose her temper. She didn’t take the bait to diminish or talk down to Trump supporters.”
Sharing her message with people who may not know it
The interview netted 7.1 million viewers and during the roughly half hour segment, Harris was able to show off aspects of her personality and insert talking points about her plans, like for affordable housing and small business expansion.
She worked to get her message across, which largely involved criticism of Trump. That effort was considered a win by her campaign because viewers tuned in who may not have watched her previous interviews, let alone her recent rallies.
She pushed back when Baier tried to move on from a question regarding Trump’s “enemy from within” remarks about his own rivals at home. Fox played a clip from a town hall that aired earlier Wednesday, during which Trump said, “I’m not threatening anybody.”
Harris responded, “That clip was not what he has been saying about the enemy from within. … That’s not what you just showed.”
“You and I both know that, and you and I both know he has talked about turning the military on the American people,” the vice president added.
Her aggressive confrontation allowed for her to make her point about Trump and also set up a contrast to her rival.
“I think to some extent the fact that she was so combative and just kind of vigorous and strong was just a big contrast to Trump looking feeble and like he’s trying to limp past the finish line here,” said Jesse Lee, who served in the Obama and Biden White Houses. “There’s not a lot of things that are going to change undecided voters’ minds at this point but I think that contrast is one of those things.”
She made a little news
Harris has struggled at times to find the right lines when it comes to Biden.
The vice president has shown loyalty to the president, and she does not want to criticize the policies of an administration she’s worked hard for. That wouldn’t necessarily be good politics, either.
But she’s her own politician, her own candidate and her own person.
After whiffing a week ago on what she wished had been handled differently by the Biden administration, she made it clear to Baier and the Fox audience that she’d differ from Biden.
“Let me be very clear: My presidency would not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency. And like every new president that comes into office, I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences and fresh new ideas,” she told Baier. “I represent a new generation of leadership.”
Brett Samuels contributed to this report.