Vice President Kamala Harris sat for an interview Wednesday in somewhat unfriendly territory for a Democratic presidential candidate, engaging in a spirited back-and-forth with Fox News anchor Bret Baier over issues like immigration and former President Donald Trump’s rhetoric, while vowing that her administration would not be a continuation of President Joe Biden’s term in office.
“My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” Harris vowed, a little more than a week after saying on ABC’s “The View” that she couldn’t think of anything she would have done differently from her former boss. (She later shifted gears and said she’d pick a Republican for her Cabinet.)
Baier, the chief political anchor for the network with a wide conservative audience, pressed Harris repeatedly on issues ranging from the U.S.-Mexico border, previous comments in support of taxpayer-funded gender transition treatment, and even asked her if she believes Trump’s supporters are “stupid.”
“I would never say that about the American people,” Harris replied.
He also interrupted Harris multiple times — including within the first few seconds of the interview — prompting the vice president to ask the anchor if she could “please finish” answering his questions.
“May I please finish responding?” Harris said at one point in the interview. “I’m in the middle of responding to the point you’re making, and I’d like to finish.”
“I would like if we could have a conversation that is grounded in a full assessment of the facts,” she said at another point.
Baier later in the interview offered his apologies for the two “talking over each other” throughout their sit-down.
Harris hammered Trump over his rhetoric, calling fellow Americans “the enemy from within” and his calls to deploy the U.S. military against them.
“This is a democracy,” she added. “The president of the United States... should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he’d lock people up.”
At one point in the interview, Baier tried to play a clip that he characterized as Trump defending his comments, but was actually the Republican nominee saying his comments were taken out of context while saying that he’s the victim of rhetoric from his opponents.
Harris did not accept the anchor’s explanation.
“Bret, I’m sorry, and with all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about ‘the enemy within,’ that he has repeated when he is speaking about the American people, that’s not what you just showed,” she said.
“Here’s the bottom line: He has repeated it many times, and you and I both know that,” Harris said. “And you and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people. He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest. He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him.”
On Trump, she also said that Americans “are exhausted with someone who professes to be a leader and who spends full time demeaning and engaging in personal grievances.”
“He’s not stable,” Harris said of her opponent.
Baier challenged Harris on Biden’s mental fitness — “Joe Biden is not on the ballot and Donald Trump is,” she fired back — and past support for inmates receiving gender-transition care, which is a frequent line used in attack ads against Harris. She sought to turn that around on Trump, pointing out that such services happened under his administration.
“I will follow the law, and it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed,” Harris said, adding: “Frankly, that ad from the Trump campaign is a little bit of like throwing stones when you’re living in a glass house.”
Much of the interview was devoted to pushing Harris on immigration, an issue where Trump has sought to press her on, misleadingly attacking her as the Biden administration’s “border czar” and blaming her for an influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. (While crossings were high for much of Biden’s presidency after undoing many of Trump’s executive actions early on, they’ve plummeted after he signed an executive order severely limiting asylum.)
Baier read off a list of names of people killed by undocumented migrants. Harris expressed her condolences for each one and sought to blame Trump for moving to kill a bipartisan border bill negotiated by Republicans, Democrats and independents in the U.S. Senate earlier this year.
She also reiterated that she no longer stands by her previous views from her 2019 presidential run that she supports decriminalizing illegal border crossings.
“That was five years ago,” she said. “I am very clear that I will follow the law.”
The interview was part of Harris' continued efforts to make her case to Republicans who may be put off by former President Donald Trump -- and in that regard, her campaign said, she accomplished her mission.
"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 that she’s been making on the trail, and she also got to show her toughness in standing tall against a hostile interviewer," Harris campaign communications director Brian Fallon told reporters after the interview.
The Democratic campaign -- dating back to when Biden was the nominee -- has made numerous entreaties to moderate Republicans, like those who supported former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in the 2024 Republican primaries.
"I think there’s a good number of independents and Haley-style Republicans who are very open to voting for VP Harris, and that’s why we are open to doing events with Republicans and on Fox News," Fallon said.
Former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who stumped with Harris earlier Wednesday in Pennsylvania along with more than 100 former Republican officials, praised her performance.
"She went into the lion's den and took them on and stood tall," Kinzinger wrote on social media. "Fox tried their bs gotchas in their rightwing reality, and she turned everything deftly back to Trump and held him accountable in his own safe space. She did not let them bait her at all - strong, confident, epic. She totally schooled Bret Baier."
A spokesperson for Trump's campaign accused Harris of being "angry, defensive" and charged that she "abdicated any responsibility for the problems Americans are facing."