Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris sat for an interview with Fox News anchor Bret Baier on Wednesday night and skewered Republican nominee and former president Donald Trump on several occasions.
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Lincoln Project founder Rick Wilson: “Kamala came to Fox to stack bodies.”
In the most controversial part of the interview, Baier played a clip of Trump insisting that liberals were the enemy because he has been investigated “more than Al Capone.” When Baier asked for Harris’ reaction, she pounced:
“With all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about the ‘enemy within’ that he has repeated when he’s speaking about the American people,” Harris said. “That’s not what you just showed.”
Baier tried to interrupt, but Harris kept going.
Don’t we, as people opposed to a Trump presidency, wish interviewers were more controlling over a Trump as he avoids direct questions?
I don’t know how long you’ve been around to observe political discourse but no politician ever directly answers a question. This was something I observed as a child watching presidential debates. It annoyed the heck out of me - just answer the question. Instead, they take a kernel of the question to reply with a scripted response. It’s what they’re trained to do. This is more problematic today as responses are edited and reposted on social media.
Frankly, from the few clips I’ve watched, I thought Baier did great and wish more interviewers were as competent as he.
Whether or not Harris did well is another question. I’m seeing a wide array of opinions - r/conservative, while not swing voters are also not liberal voters, claim she was destroyed. I haven’t watched enough to say.
I’ve been watching politics for decades and have been on both sides of the political spectrum.
Nearly every politician is instructed to “answer the question you wish they had asked first.” Why? Because, usually, interviewers especially on Fox News are not interested in asking legitimately good questions, but rather asking “gotcha” questions to drum up attention. This was not a good faith interview by Fox by any means. Some of these questions are Loaded, which answering directly either yes/no can be framed negatively with clips later on.
That being said, if you’ve watched as many Harris interviews as I have, she has a tendency to first answer the question broadly by giving context, and then usually circles back to the question at hand.
As the other user said, a professional interviewer acting in good with will still let the politician finish their train of thought — or even finish their sentence — before circling back to the question if they felt it wasn’t answered directly enough.
All due respect but who gives a flying fuck what r/conservative thinks? The problem is they don’t think. They’re cheering for their side and would lick dogshit if the pile said Dems bad. They have a clear motive to frame everything as Donald being perfect and Harris stumbling at every turn.
In my experience, gotcha questions are outliers. Most of these sorts of interviews, and public debates, are composed of questions that are aligned with the viewer of that outlet. So when a politicians side steps the question asked, they’re rejecting the opinions and concerns of the audience. I can’t tell you how many times a “liberal” news outlet has interviewed a democratic candidate and the candidate fails to answer the question. Gotcha question or not, it pisses me off.
I disagree that the interviewer should allow the person to finish their thought. I prefer people to be direct when asked direct questions. This is not the time to speak broadly - that’s what your campaign ads are for, that’s what your social media is for, that’s what your stump speeches are for. This is the moment to speak directly to the concerns of the outlet’s audience - assuming they are in-good-faith questions.
Conservatives care about what conservatives think, as do moderates. There may be enough among them who might be swayed one way or the other depending on the dialog. The middle ground is where elections are won so what’s happening in these forums is not irrelevant. Moreover (and where my mind is spending a lot of time these days), how blind are people in liberal forums to the larger premise of what they’re observing and saying. People need to spend more time imagining what they’re reading / hearing is being said about the other candidate. I’d this were a clip of Anderson Cooper interviewing Trump, how would liberals and conservatives react? I imagine just the mirror of what we’re seeing now.
And, to be honest, I care about conservatives because they’re Americans. They’re my friends and neighbors and family members. They’re being mislead by politicians and manipulated by corporations. The further we push each other away from each other, the more we fail to embrace our commonalities, the more likely we are to actually face a civil war. Allowing misinformation to continue like this is going to lead to nine conservative justices. “They’re stupid” is not a good enough reason to write them off. The choices they make and the choices we make has an impact on the entire country now and for the foreseeable future. If you give a flying fuck about any young children in your family, you’d be a little more open to finding common ground with conservatives and calming the toxic atmosphere we’re living in.
There’s a difference between asking the same question again after a non-answer (which is what all interviewers should do) and interrupting someone to prevent them from answering the question.
Exactly. She was avoiding direct questions and Baier was trying to keep her on track. I wish more interviewers would do this.
Q: How many illegal immigrants would you say your administration has released into the country.
A: I agree that this is an important topic.
Q: Do you have a rough estimate?
A: The point is we have a broken immigration system that needs to be repaired.
Q: (since she’s not answering…) Your Homeland Security Secretary says about 6 million people.
This was just the preamble to his first question and she’s already speaking from her script.
Q: When you came in to office you undid a number of Trump border policies. Do you regret this decision?
A: We tried to pass some legislation. - Baier points out the six Ds who voted against the bill and that this has nothing to do with their decision to undo what Trump had in place.
Harris is the one avoiding the questions and interrupting him.
I think this is a legit question. Had she given a legit answer and been honest with the audience, Fox News viewers, maybe she would have gained some respect. I am definitely in support of Harris but you have to look at this from the vantage point of Fox News viewers. From their perspective, she failed. I would hope that from her campaign’s perspective, they see that she failed to reach the audience she was there to speak with.