Former Harris aide says Baier pulled interview questions from ‘Trump/Vance press release’

Former top aide to Vice President Harris turned MSNBC host Symone Sanders knocked Fox News anchor Bret Baier over how the journalist handled a high-stakes interview on “Special Report” with the Democratic nominee that aired on the network Wednesday evening.

“On the tone, I have sat in the room for a number of interviews with VP Harris and they have been tough,” Sanders Townsend said in a post on the social platform X. “I’ve never witnessed what I witnessed tonight though. The interviewer wasn’t themselves – instead he was rude, misleading and pulled questions straight out of a proverbial Trump/Vance press release.”

During the at-times contentious back-and-forth between the anchor and vice president, Baier pressed Harris on her policies on immigration, her knowledge of President Biden’s mental acuity before he dropped out of the 2024 race and her positions on key foreign policy issues.

“The best part is, VP’s response was simply to match his energy, stick to her why of the interview and not take the bait,” Sanders said. “This is what a President would do.”

During the Wednesday interview, Harris and Baier clashed for a long time over immigration, with the Fox News anchor starting the interview by asking the vice president the number of immigrants that had crossed the border during her time in her current role. Harris acknowledged immigration was “a topic of discussion that people want to rightly have,” but Baier cut in to point out that it was 6 million immigrants.

Baier also pressed the vice president over the Biden administration’s decision to stop a policy from the Trump era that made potential asylum seekers stay in Mexico to wait for the results of their case in U.S. immigration court.

Harris mentioned that the first proposed piece of legislation President Biden put forward after his inauguration was on immigration, but Baier also noted that the bill didn’t come up for a vote while Democrats held the House and Senate.

“We recognized from day one that — on the point of this being your first question — it is a priority for us as a nation and for the American people, and our focus has been on fixing a problem,” Harris said.

Sanders’s criticism was one of many from Harris’s allies, some of whom raised issues with Baier’s line of questioning — including the clips of statements from former President Trump and Harris Fox played during their conversation — and heaped praise on the vice president for her repeated and forceful condemnation of Trump.

Others praised Baier’s performance, applauding his direct follow-ups on key issues like immigration and how she would differ from Biden if elected.

Harris herself at one point during the conversation referred to Baier as “a serious journalist.”

The less than 30-minute conversation between Baier and Harris, which was aired in full live, was seen going in as a key moment for both the network and the Democratic nominee.

It was the first formal sit down interview Harris has granted to Fox, the top-watched cable channel that boasts an often controversial but highly-rated slate of conservative commentators.

The interview on Fox comes as Harris is pressuring former President Trump to meet her on a debate stage with less than three weeks until election day, a pitch the former president as repeatedly declined.

Trump participated instead in a town hall event focused on women’s issues and the economy that aired earlier on Wednesday with Fox, a network he regularly ridicules but appears on often.

This post was updated at 9:50 p.m. EST.