Kamala Harris’s big Fox gamble did not pay off Kamala Harris’s interview with Fox News on Wednesday night was never expected to be a friendly affair.
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Kamala Harris' interview with Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier on Wednesday is the latest indication that Democrats duringthis campaignare increasingly willing to engage with a network well-stocked with supporters of opponentDonald Trump.
Since the party’s convention in August, roughly twice as many Democrats have been on Fox than during the same period in President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, which itself was more often than when Hillary Clinton was the nominee in 2016, according to the network.
Whether to ignore Fox or seize opportunities to change the viewpoints of some audience members has long been a subject of internal debate among Democrats. Biden didn’t make a Fox-specific appearance during his campaign. Clinton made one appearance during her primary campaign and another in mid-summer 2016.
“The vice president, Governor Walz, and our campaign believe it is important to speak to all Americans, wherever they are getting their information or entertainment, so they can hear directly from us — not through a filter — who Vice President Harris is, what she stands for and what she’s running to do,” said Ian Sams, Harris campaign spokesman.
Not just Democrats are seeing the new faces on Fox News
Guess who’s noticed?
Trump grumbled on his social media feed this week about Sams, who was interviewed Wednesday on Fox by Dana Perino, Tuesday by Martha MacCallum, and Monday by Neil Cavuto. Trump said Sams “virtually owns the network.”
“It’s not worthwhile doing interviews on Fox because it all just averages out into NOTHING,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Fox News has totally lost its way.”
Trump on Wednesday appeared on Fox, hours before Harris, in a pre-taped town hall meeting featuring female voters and hosted by Harris Faulkner.
Baier’s interview with Harris was combative, starting with a discussion on immigration and touching on the economy, the Biden administration, and polls showing Americans think the nation is on the wrong track. At times they seemed to be talking past each other.
“I’m in the middle of responding to the point you’re raising and I’d like to finish,” Harris said at one point.
Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, has appeared two weeks in a row on “Fox News Sunday,” which runs on both broadcast and cable. Host Shannon Bream said she was “a little bit surprised” when the Democratic campaign reached out before his appearance this past Sunday.
“I think folks are still undecided out there,” Walz replied. “I appreciate you. You ask good, hard questions and your viewers get a chance to hear.”
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was something of a “Fox whisperer” earlier in the campaign, seeming to relish mixing it up with network anchors to the point where he opened his Democratic convention speech by saying, “I’m Pete Buttigieg and you might recognize me from Fox News.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Reps. Jared Moskowitz of Florida and Ro Khanna of California are among the other Democrats who have made multiple appearances.
The Fox guest shots are largely confined to daytime and, like Bream’s show, weekend hours. Democrats are seldom seen on prime-time shows hosted by Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity, and Greg Gutfeld.
While it usually doesn’t make sense for a Democrat to go on a network fully committed to their defeat, this is an exception, said Dan Pfeiffer, co-host of “Pod Save America” and former aide to President Barack Obama. “A Democrat going into enemy territory is a great way to get attention and soft Republicans and Republican-leaning independents is a top target for her campaign,” he said.
Fox also argues that it has more independent and Democratic viewers than most people think. Its audience size alone makes it tough to ignore: Fox’s share of the cable news audience is more than CNN and MSNBC combined in all of the swing states except Nevada.
What Harris was facing in Fox’s Bret Baier
Baier hosts a 6 p.m. news hour on Fox and, with MacCallum, generally co-hosts most of Fox’s big news events. “I would expect what you pretty much get with Baier: strong, tough questions with aggressive follow-up. In a word: fair,” wrote Tom Jones in the Poynter Institute journalism newsletter on Wednesday.
Yet Baier is also keenly aware of the network’s audience, sometimes to his detriment. Court papers in a lawsuit against Fox News for spreading false stories about an elections technology firm after the 2020 election revealed that Baier privately urged Fox’s controversial — and ultimately correct — call of Biden’s win in Arizona be overturned.
Trump said on Truth Social that he would have preferred a more hard-hitting journalist conduct the Harris interview, saying Baier “is often very soft on those in the ‘cocktail circuit’ Left.”
In the days before his interview with Harris, Baier took to social media to tamp down suspicions expressed by some Fox viewers.
“No doubt she already has the list of questions. I don’t trust him,” wrote one user on X, which Baier retweeted with an answer: “No one has the questions. Except me.”
To others who suspected the interview might be edited, he insisted it would be taped at 5:30 p.m. Eastern — the time the Harris campaign gave for the interview — and shown in its entirety on his show shortly after.
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris defended the Biden administration's handling of illegal immigration in a combative television interview on Wednesday, blaming Republicans for failing to pass a border security bill.
Grilled by host Bret Baier on Fox News, Harris also defended President Joe Biden's mental fitness, her years as his vice president, and her previous support of gender-affirming surgery for transgender inmates.
Harris and Baier frequently talked over each other and Harris grew visibly frustrated, but she delivered her message for the Nov. 5 election to a conservative audience that might not often hear it.
She was asked to defend the administration's early decision to reverse some of the restrictive border policies of Republican rival Donald Trump when he was president and to respond to a mother who testified in Congress about the loss of her daughter at the hands of an immigrant in the U.S. illegally.
"I'm so sorry for her loss, but let's talk about what is happening right now," Harris said. She said Trump told Republicans to reject a bipartisan immigration bill early this year because "he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem."
Trump and Republicans have claimed that immigrants are fueling violent crime in the United States, although studies show immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than others.
Asked about her recent comment that there was "not a thing" she would change about the actions of the Biden administration, Harris said, “Let me be very clear, my presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden's presidency."
She said she would bring in new ideas from Republicans and business leaders to solve housing shortages and expand small businesses.
TRUMP TEAM CALLS INTERVIEW 'TRAIN WRECK'
Harris was a vocal supporter of Biden when he faced mounting questions about his mental fitness after a disastrous June debate with Trump, before dropping out of the race in July. She was asked to defend those statements.
Biden has the “judgment” and “experience” to be president, she said, while questioning Trump’s fitness for office. “Joe Biden is not on the ballot, and Donald Trump is,” Harris said.
She was pressed on her position on using taxpayer funds for gender-affirming surgery for transgender inmates, including those who are undocumented. Trump has spent millions of dollars in ads on the subject in battleground states.
“I will follow the law,” Harris said, noting that the U.S. Bureau of Prisons provided gender-affirming treatments under Trump. She accused him of “throwing stones when you live in a glass house.”
The nearly 30-minute interview marked the first time Harris has appeared as a presidential candidate on the conservative media network, which often features opinion show hosts who mock her and other Democrats and tout Trump's policies.
Within minutes of the interview's end, the Trump campaign released a statement calling it a "train wreck."
David Urban, a political strategist and past Trump campaign aide, said Harris gave an uneven and subpar performance, avoiding responsibility and making Trump the scapegoat. "Another losing media cycle for the Harris campaign," Urban said.
Democrats said Harris went on unfriendly territory and made it through without any gaffes. Repeated interruptions kept Harris's answers short, they said, preventing the meandering answers that she has been criticized for in the past.
“We feel like we definitely achieved what we set out to achieve," said Brian Fallon, a Harris spokesperson. "She was able to reach an audience that has 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."
COURTING REPUBLICANS
The interview was part of a direct appeal by Harris on Wednesday to Republican voters. Before the Fox News interview, she highlighted Republican support for her campaign in a pivotal county in Pennsylvania, one of the handful of swing states likely to determine the election.
In Bucks County outside of Philadelphia, Harris emphasized Trump's attempt to overturn his election loss four years ago, when he lost the White House to Biden.
She said Trump's actions violated the U.S. Constitution and that, if given the chance, he would violate it again.
"He refused to accept the will of the people and the results of a free and fair election. He sent a mob, an armed mob, to the United States Capitol, where they violently assaulted police officers, and law enforcement officials and threatened the life of his own vice president," Harris said.
Over 100 Republicans joined Harris in Bucks County, including Adam Kinzinger, a former congressman and member of the committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by supporters of then-President Trump.
"No matter your party, no matter who you voted for last time, there is a place for you in this campaign," Harris said. She led Trump by a marginal 46% to 43% in a recent Reuters poll.
Trump on Wednesday participated in a town hall for Latino voters hosted by the Spanish-language network Univision. Fox News aired another Trump town hall with an all-women audience.
Harris has previously sought to court voters disillusioned by Trump. Former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, this month urged voters to put country over party and vote for Harris, saying Trump was not fit to lead the U.S.
Biden beat Trump in Bucks County by about 17,000 votes in the 2020 election, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton beat Trump there in 2016 by fewer than 3,000 votes, according to county data.
This summer, Republicans overtook Democrats in the number of voter registrations in Bucks County for the first time in a generation. Republicans now have some 3,500 more voters in the county than Democrats, according to the latest data.
Harris is also weighing joining the podcaster Joe Rogan, whose show reaches millions of men across the political spectrum, and who has joked that a "puppet master" was behind Harris' strong debate performance against Trump last month.
