Politics
Bret Baier’s attacks said a lot more about Trump than Harris.
Photo illustration by Slate. Screengrab via Fox News.
Well, Kamala Harris did it: She went on Fox News.
And viewers were disabused of any notion that the station might approach the interview with minimally journalistic standards pretty much instantly. From the second host Bret Baier set up opposite the presidential hopeful it was clear this would be a classic Fox News dogpile.
Just to get a sense of how this went: The very first question Baier asked, barely a breath after the pleasantries of meeting were exchanged, was “How many illegal immigrants would you estimate your administration has released into the country over the last three and a half years?”
The subsequent 20-odd minutes were peppered with gotchas and interruptions, spliced with outside video segments meant to undercut the vice president’s answers. Whenever Harris began to say something other than exactly what Baier had clearly hoped his setup would deliver, he interjected to put her back on the back foot. (He also repeatedly demanded Harris apologize to the mother of a child who was killed by an out-of-status immigrant.) The final five minutes were almost unintelligible, marked almost entirely by crosstalk, as Baier refused to let Harris speak uninterrupted.
Of course, Harris wasn’t only fighting on the laughably slanted floor of Fox News. She was also doing battle against the station’s chyrons, which were equivalently dismissive of her answers—one read “Going Nowhere Fast”—as well as an assembled spin room, members of which spent the back half of the hourlong block praising Baier and condemning Harris’s “thin” answers and “rough” moments.
If that weren’t enough, Baier also complained that Harris arriving 15 minutes late to the scheduled call time—the interview was staged an hour before broadcast—was the vice president “icing the kicker.” The laughable invocation of that idiom should tell you plenty about how Baier and the station conceived of the interview: Baier and Harris were on opposite teams, and Baier was attempting to score points.
Indeed Baier made no attempt to even showcase an inch of daylight between himself, his station, and the Trump campaign, which is actually competing against Harris.
In that way, the interview was less revealing about Harris than it was about where the Trump campaign believes its strengths lie. Baier hammered Harris over and over again on immigration and transgender people, issues that the Trump campaign clearly believes offer it the strongest competitive edge. (There is plenty of reason to doubt this approach. Republicans ran hard on immigration in 2018, and promptly suffered their worst electoral washout of the Trump decade. In 2022, they fared little better running hard on “parental rights.”)
It was the exchange over trans issues that was the most revealing, one of the few times that Harris seemed to extemporize (as opposed to sticking to talking points). After Baier praised and then played a Trump attack ad that highlighted Harris’ past openness to inmates accessing gender-affirming health care (literally), which is very simply required by law, he defied Harris to respond to it. Some Democrats have been getting weaker-kneed on defending trans issues lately, viewing it as a liability that’s not worth taking on.
Harris’ response was decisive. “Donald Trump has spent $20 million on these ads. On an issue that, as it relates to the biggest issues that affect the American people, is really quite remote.” Rather than kowtowing to the Republican framing on the issue, which she can be inclined to do, she dismissed it as not a major American concern. It wasn’t a florid embrace of trans rights, but a summary dismissal of a bad-faith attack on a vulnerable minority population.
There’s also plenty of reason to doubt Trump’s approach on this issue, too—Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear won reelection in 2023 as a Democrat in a very red state openly defending trans rights. And it was notable to see Harris not running away from it or trying to triangulate.
In recent years, Democrats have gone on Fox News on occasion, sometimes to winning effect. Bernie Sanders held town halls with the channel, reaching out to voters with his policy agenda. Pete Buttigieg has delighted in sparring with the show’s more news-bound anchors on occasion, sometimes defending the policies of the Biden Administration in which he serves. And Gavin Newsom has made a show of going on with Sean Hannity, his old pal, for some laughable arguments.
Harris is no friend of Baier and no debate team zealot. She held her own but had few truly memorable moments. The idea that the event might have resulted in voter persuasion in either direction seems very remote. Even if an undecided 6 p.m. Fox News watcher (does such a thing exist?) tuned in for only the interview, and shut off the program before any of the postgame commentary, the interview itself was muddled enough as to afford little clarity, levity, or personality. The spin room squad later condemned Harris for showing a lack of “joy.”
Of course, the reactions to the interview were brightly polarized. The Harris team reacted positively to the showcase, saying it evinced strength and a willingness to walk into the lion’s den. The Trump team was delighted with the outcome, with Trump, who has been ducking debates and mainstream press spots, tweeting favorably about Baier. His campaign team posted the entire interview, calling it “our newest ad.” And that says all you need to know about Fox News’ role in the endeavor, too.
Donald Trump
Fox News
Media
Kamala Harris
2024 Campaign
Source : Slate News