Politics
State of the Union: The host Brett Baier claims that Harris’s staffers cut the interview short.
Vice President Kamala Harris sat down Wednesday with FOX News’ Brett Baier for a tense interview.
The interview, the first that the vice president has done with an outlet considered hostile to her campaign, was widely seen as a liability for the Democratic candidate.
Watching Baier’s Harris interview. Thoughts:
Harris is getting her first taste of what it’s like to be a conservative interviewed by the mainstream media, and she doesn’t like it one bit.
She started reasonably strong, but the longer it goes on, the more she’s falling apart
— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) October 17, 2024
Harris dodged several questions on the subject of immigration. “We have a broken immigration system that needs to be repaired,” Harris replied to a question asking how many illegal aliens had entered the country since Biden took office. She likewise avoided answering a question about whether she regretted Biden’s administration to termination of the Trump-era “Remain In Mexico” policy.
Baier pressed Harris on whether she still holds to her 2019 positions of supporting free tuition, drivers’ licenses, and free healthcare for illegal immigrants. “Listen, that was five years, and I’ve made it very clear that I will follow the law, I have made that statement over and over again, and as vice president, that is exactly what I’ve done,” Harris told Baier. She forcefully repudiated her former view that illegal border crossing should be decriminalized.
“I do not believe in decriminalizing border crossings, and I’ve not done that as vice president, and I will not do that as president,” Harris said.
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Harris attacked the former President Donald Trump throughout the interview. “I do believe that the American people are ready to turn the page on the divisiveness and the type of rhetoric that has come out of Donald Trump, they are ready to chart a new way forward and they want a President who has a plan for the future, and a plan that is sound and will strengthen out country,” Harris told Baier.
Harris also doubled down on her comments that Iran is the chief adversary of the United States. “I will tell you most recently, whether it was in April or in October, and in several hours on each occasion that Iran posed a threat to Israel, I was there, I was recently in the situation room in the most recent attack, working with the heads of our military, and doing what America must always do to defend and to support Israel in its requirement to defend itself.”
Since the release of the interview, Baier has claimed that Harris’s team arrived to the interview late, and that Harris’s staffers were waving for him to end the interview early, preventing him from asking all of his intended questions.
