Harris Came for a Fox News Interview, but Got a Debate With Bret Baier

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Kamala Harris Arrived for a Fox Interview. She Got a Debate.

The vice president’s sit-down with Bret Baier was her most contentious meeting with a journalist since becoming the Democratic nominee.

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By Michael M. Grynbaum

Michael Grynbaum is a media correspondent covering the 2024 campaign.

Vice President Kamala Harris may not get another debate with former President Donald J. Trump, but on Wednesday, she got one with Bret Baier.

In an interview that turned contentious almost the instant it began, Mr. Baier, Fox News’s chief political anchor, repeatedly pressed the Democratic presidential nominee on illegal immigration, taxpayer support for gender-transition surgery and other areas that closely aligned with Mr. Trump’s regular attacks against her.

At one point, Mr. Baier wondered if the vice president considered Mr. Trump’s supporters “stupid.” (“I would never say that about the American people,” she replied.) At another point, he asked if she would apologize to the mother of a murdered 12-year-old Texas girl whose death is frequently invoked by Mr. Trump because two recent Venezuelan migrants were charged with the crime.

Mr. Baier’s aggressive demeanor was consistent with the kind of tough coverage of Ms. Harris that blankets Fox News’s daily programming. Lots of viewers were surely eager to hear how she would respond when confronted head-on.

Frequently, however, Mr. Baier did not give viewers that chance. Instead, looking frustrated, he cut off several of Ms. Harris’s answers after a few seconds. His first interruption came within the first half-minute of their exchange.

“May I please finish responding?” Ms. Harris asked at one point. “I’m in the middle of responding to the point you’re making, and I’d like to finish.”

A veteran interviewer, and the face of Fox News’s relatively nonpartisan 6 p.m. newscast, Mr. Baier was eager to shake Ms. Harris off her usual talking points, including playing a Trump campaign ad and asking her to respond.

That approach yielded dividends. Pressed on differences between herself and President Biden, Ms. Harris issued one of her clearest comments yet creating distance from the current administration: “My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” she said.

Still, in his eagerness to prevent a filibuster, Mr. Baier’s follow-up questions sometimes resembled rebuttals. Afterward, on a political roundtable with Fox commentators, Mr. Baier sounded a touch defensive. “I tried to redirect numerous times without interrupting too much, but at some point, you kind of have to redirect to get back in the game,” he said.

Any high-stakes interview is a high-wire act, and Mr. Baier later acknowledged that he had been frustrated before the encounter had even begun. He said the taping had been scheduled to start at 5 p.m., less than an hour before his newscast, and described what he called last-minute shifts by the Harris campaign.

“We were going to do 25 or 30 minutes. They came in and said, ‘Well, maybe 20,’ so it was already getting whittled down,” Mr. Baier said. “Then the vice president showed up about 5:15. We were pushing the envelope to be able to turn it around for the top of the 6 o’clock. So that’s how it started, and I could tell when we started talking that she was going to be tough to, you know, redirect, without me trying to interrupt.”

He said he eventually had “four people waving their hands” in the room, telling him to wrap up.

For weeks, Ms. Harris has faced criticism for avoiding adversarial meetings with journalists. (Mr. Trump has mostly done the same.) Agreeing to her first-ever Fox News interview was an effort by the Harris campaign to allay those concerns, and to share her viewpoints directly with an audience that may not often hear them.

Her aides declared themselves pleased with the results.

“We feel like we definitely achieved what we set out to achieve, in the sense that she was able to reach an audience that has probably been not exposed to the arguments she’s been making on the trail,” Brian Fallon, Ms. Harris’s campaign communications director, told reporters on Air Force Two. “She also got to show her toughness in standing tall against a hostile interviewer.”

Mr. Baier’s colleagues on Fox News praised his performance — “It was amazing that you were the interviewer,” Dana Perino said — while sounding far less impressed by Ms. Harris. The anchor Martha MacCallum deemed Ms. Harris’s answers “thin” and told Mr. Baier, her co-host on election nights, “You really asked the questions that a lot of Americans want answers to.”

Mr. Trump has refused to participate in another debate with Ms. Harris — even on Fox News, whose attempt to host a prime-time meeting of the candidates later this month was quickly rejected by the former president’s campaign.

For now, Mr. Baier’s grilling on Wednesday evening may have to stand in.