Vice President Kamala Harris told Fox News’ Bret Baier on Wednesday her presidency “will not be a continuation of Joe Biden's presidency” if she wins next month, defending her record as vice president in a contentious interview with the longtime Fox host—her first-ever appearance on the network as the race remains razor-thin.
Harris and Baier kicked off the interview with a contentious discussion about immigration, a tough issue for Harris, with Harris largely avoiding criticizing Biden-era policies and attempting to steer the conversation toward former President Donald Trump and his attempts to kill a bipartisan border bill.
At one point in the almost 30-minute conversation on Fox News’ “Special Report,” Baier asked Harris if anything came to mind that she would do differently from Biden if she were elected, after she said in a previous interview nothing “comes to mind,” prompting Harris to tell Baier she hasn’t spent most of her career in Washington, DC, and she would solicit ideas from Republicans and business leaders.
Later, Baier asked Harris if she had noticed a decline in Biden’s mental acuity, to which she defended Biden’s record but said “Joe Biden is not on the ballot … and Donald Trump is”—a recurring theme from the interview, as Harris often sought to direct the conversation toward Trump.
Harris, repeating a comment she has levied against Trump before, said the former president used the bill to boost his campaign and accused him of preferring to “run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”
Harris also doubled down on her comments this week in which she called Trump “increasingly unstable,” deflecting a question from Baier about her potential presidency and blasting Trump as someone who is “unfit to serve.”
Baier and Harris talked over each other multiple times during the interview, creating tense exchanges that once led to Harris insisting she was “in the middle of responding to” a point that was raised by Baier.
Harris’ interview on Fox News comes after the vice president was criticized by Republicans for not agreeing to more interviews ahead of the election and taking interviews with sympathetic outlets like “The Howard Stern Show,” “The View” and “The Breakfast Club.” Harris also recently made an appearance on “60 Minutes.” Wednesday’s interview marked her first formal sit-down with the right-leaning media outlet. Harris spokesman Ian Sams told Vanity Fair’s “Inside the Hive” the Fox News interview would serve Harris well because of the network’s high ratings—it consistently out-rates CNN and MSNBC—and its share of viewers who are undecided voters. Sams also framed the interview as an opportunity for Harris to speak to viewers who he said are often “fed a bunch of crap” by Fox News, whose opinion hosts are frequent Harris critics and Trump defenders. Trump, for his part, has sat for several interviews on Fox News, but recently backed out of interviews with CNBC and CBS’ “60 Minutes.”
In a frequently contentious, sometimes testy exchange, Vice President Kamala Harris went on Fox News and fielded anchor Bret Baier’s questions on immigration, the economy and her policy differences with her Republican challenger, former President Donald Trump, as well as her boss, President Joe Biden.
Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, did the interview, her first-ever on Fox, on October 16 as part of her home-stretch election interview blitz.
Baier asked Harris how many migrants had been released into the country under the Biden-Harris administration, how she would reduce the count and why some of her stances had shifted since her 2019 presidential campaign. He asked Harris whether immigrants illegally in the US should qualify for driver’s licences, free tuition or healthcare, saying her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, had approved laws that did this.
Harris, meanwhile, called Trump unfit to serve, and said many of his former advisers had said the same. She also said his plans would weaken the economy, but hers would strengthen it.
Harris also pointedly said her path would differ from Biden’s. “My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” she stated. “And like every new president that comes into office, I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences, and fresh and new ideas.”
Harris answered questions on immigration, Trump, policies that Tim Walz signed for immigrants, and her economic agenda.
We fact-checked several of Harris’s claims and the claims that Baier brought up.
Fact-Checking Kamala Harris's Claims
Immigration
Baier said Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, signed into state law provisions “allowing immigrants in the country illegally to apply for driver’s licences, to qualify for free tuition at universities, to be enrolled in free health care”.
Mostly True. Walz signed a bill in 2023 that lets people in Minnesota, regardless of immigration status, apply for a licence or ID card. To get a licence, people must meet certain requirements. Walz said the bill would make roads safer because it ensured drivers in the state are licensed and carry insurance.
Walz signed another bill that created a scholarship program to cover tuition costs at Minnesota public colleges and universities for students whose household income is less than $80,000 a year. Students who are illegally in the US can apply if they have attended a Minnesota school for at least three years and graduated or received a GED certificate in Minnesota.
Walz also signed legislation that enables immigrants who are in the country illegally to enrol in MinnesotaCare, the state’s publicly-subsidised health insurance program for low-income residents. But unlike what Baier said, MinnesotaCare is not entirely free. People enrolled in MinnesotaCare pay premiums based on household size and income. There are also cost-sharing requirements, such as copayments and deductibles.
Trump's Record
Harris told Baier that, “when we had an American military base that was attacked, where American soldiers suffered traumatic brain injuries”, Trump “dismissed them as headaches”.
True.
Harris was referring to a January 8, 2020 Iran attack on US soldiers in Iraq. More than 100 soldiers were diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries, according to the Pentagon.
Trump has repeatedly called the injuries “headaches”.
In 2020, Trump said he had “heard that they had headaches” and added it “is not very serious”. Trump repeated this claim in an October 1 news conference in Wisconsin.
After Iran attacked Israel on October 1, Trump responded to a question about whether he should have been stronger on Iran after the 2020 attack that injured US troops. He said: “What does injured mean? You mean because they had a headache because the bombs never hit the fort?”
Harris said Trump “is the one who talks about an enemy within, an enemy within, talking about the American people, suggesting he would turn the American military, on the American people”.
True.
In a Fox News interview October 13, Trump said he believes “the enemy from within” would cause chaos on Election Day, suggesting that it is a problem that the National Guard or military might need to handle.
Trump added on to the comments, widely thought to be about Democrats and others who disagree with him, a day later in remarks to a crowd in Pennsylvania. “They are so bad and frankly, they’re evil,” Trump said. “They’re evil. What they’ve done, they’ve weaponized, they’ve weaponized our elections.”
Economic Plans
Harris said 16 Nobel laureates indicated that her economic plan “would strengthen our economy, (Trump’s) would make it weaker, would ignite inflation and invite a recession by the middle of next year”.
Mostly True.
Harris correctly describes what the Nobel laureates said about inflation during a Trump presidency: “There is rightly a worry that Donald Trump will reignite this inflation.”
But while the group describes Harris’s agenda as “vastly superior” to Trump’s, their letter does not specifically predict a recession by the middle of 2025.
Rather, the group wrote: “We believe that a second Trump term would have a negative impact on the US’s economic standing in the world and a destabilizing effect on the US’s domestic economy.”
The 16 economists are George Akerlof, Angus Deaton, Claudia Goldin, Oliver Hart, Eric S. Maskin, Daniel L. McFadden, Paul R. Milgrom, Roger B. Myerson, Edmund S. Phelps, Paul M. Romer, Alvin E. Roth, William F. Sharp, Robert J. Shiller, Christopher A. Sims, Joseph Stiglitz, and Robert B. Wilson.
Baier's Criticisms of Harris
Fox News host Bret Baier claimed Kamala Harris was 15 minutes late to their fiery sit-down interview as he delivered his verdict on the vice president’s performance.
The veteran presenter spoke to colleague Dana Perino to give his post-mortem on the 27-minute interview after it wrapped on Wednesday night, saying it had been “tough to redirect” the Democratic candidate without interrupting her.
Baier compared Harris being late to the interview to when the kicker in football calls a time-out before they go to kick the field goal.
“They’re icing the kicker,” he said. “So, we were supposed to start at 5pm. This was the time they gave us. Originally, we were going to do 25 or 30 minutes. They came in and said, ‘Well, maybe 20.’ So, it’s already getting whittled down.
“And then the vice president showed up at about 5.15pm,” he said, adding that it was a tight turnaround because the show airs at 6pm.
Baier has been criticized online for repeatedly interrupting and talking over the vice president during the interview, where the pair had several heated exchanges.
Addressing his interruptions, he told Perino: “I could tell when we started talking that she was going to be tough to redirect without me trying to interrupt.
“I did this with President Obama–at one point I just said, ‘Mr President, I know you like to filibuster.’ I just didn’t even have the chance, sometimes, to redirect in those ways. I had a lot of other questions.”
When his time was up, he said Harris’s campaign staff started waving their hands signaling the interview was over. “I’m talking, like, four people waving their hands like it’s got to stop,” he said.
However, Perino conceded: “At times, especially when she was trying to go after Donald Trump, she was fairly effective in that, to try to get her point of view across.”
Responses to the Interview
Trump weighed in on the interview, accusing Harris of having an “irredeemable case of Trump derangement syndrome,” and – despite concerns over his own cognitive faculties – suggested the vice president should take a cognitive test.
Posting on Truth Social, Trump said: “She is barely able to talk about any subject other than the man who had the best economy ever, the strongest border in history, and who just got the UNANIMOUS ENDORSEMENT OF THE U.S. Border Patrol, ME!”
He added: “She is also the WORST Vice President in history, but hopefully will soon be GONE. Again, congratulations to Bret Baier on a tough but very fair interview, one that clearly showed how totally incompetent Kamala is. For the good of our Nation, her inferior Cognitive ability must be tested at once!”
Meanwhile, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNN it was an “impressive” performance from Harris. “She was tough, smart, focused, disciplined, the same qualities that made her a very effective prosecutor, and I think are going to make her a very effective president,” he said.
Former GOP representative Adam Kinzinger also praised her for “going into the lion’s den”.
“She went into the lion’s den and took them on and stood tall. Fox tried their bs [sic] gotchas in their rightwing reality, and she turned everything deftly back to Trump and held him accountable in his own safe space,” he said.
Baier also questioned whether Harris went into the interview seeking “a viral moment” that would be shared on other networks and social media, adding: “I think she may have gotten that.”
Democratic presidential nominee Harris took part in a somewhat tempestuous interview with Baier on Wednesday, during which she discussed immigration, transgender healthcare and said Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump had “talked about turning the American military on the American people.”
Harris’s decision to appeal on Fox News, a conservative leaning network, came as polling indicated the 2024 presidential election is too close to call in a number of key swing states.
The vice president’s campaign team has reportedly also been discussing an appearance on Joe Rogan’s popular podcast as part of a strategy to get Harris a hearing beyond her core support.
Earlier this week polling website 338Canada gave Trump a 51 percent chance of winning in November, up from 47 percent one week ago.
Baier discussed the process behind securing the interview with Harris, later on Wednesday evening, during an appearance on Fox News colleague Sean Hannity’s show.
During the discussion, Baier said he and his team were on edge as Harris had arrived later than expected, making it more difficult for his team to get the interview ready to go live in time for the start of the show at 6 p.m. ET.
He said: “It was a little tense–we were given the time of 5 p.m. eastern time. Obviously my show is at 6 p.m. They wanted to tape at 5 p.m. We said we were going to tape as live, in other words roll the tape and just turn that around unedited, uninterrupted, but we had to do it before 5:15 otherwise we couldn't turn the whole machine around before the top of the 6 p.m. show.
“So we were waiting at 4:55, and then 5:00, and 5:05 and 5:10,” he added.
“At 5:17 the vice-president walked out, so it did feel a little bit like they were icing the kicker or trying to, and originally they were talking about 25 minutes and they gave us 20 minutes.”
But, he added: “I was fine with any time, I was really happy to get the interview.”
Baier's Perspective on the Interview
During the interview Baier and Harris had a tense back-and-forth over immigration, after the vice-president was asked how many undocumented immigrants the Biden administration “has released into the country over the last three and a half years.”
Harris replied that the U.S. has “a broken immigration system that needs to be repaired” at which point Baier cut in asking about Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s claim that 85 percent of those detained near the Mexican border had since been released.
Harris shot back with, “I’m not finished, I’m not finished” before talking about the failed U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, which Biden introduced on his first day in office.
She also referenced a bipartisan immigration deal which she blamed Trump for torpedoing at the start of this year. This exchange was widely shared across social media.
During his later discussion with Hannity, Baier suggested Harris may have been seeking a confrontation.
“I think she had a mission that she wanted to do and maybe she wanted to have a viral moment, she wanted to have a pushback.
“She came to Fox News and she wanted to go after Donald Trump—[a] viral moment that plays on a lot of other channels and on social media—and I think she may have gotten that.”
After the Harris interview was confirmed Baier rejected claims by some Trump supporters that he had agreed to go easy on the Democratic candidate. Trump himself labelled Baier “very soft” in a Truth Social post.
Responding to one Trump supporter, Baier said: “There were no preconditions to get the interview. No one has the questions ahead of time—except me.
“No topic is off the table. And if there is any editing, it will be very minimal for timing and will be editorially the same question and answer.”
Harris is considering sitting for an interview with the “Joe Rogan Experience,” which is among the most popular U.S. podcasts, Reuters reported—another unlikely platform for the vice president.
