Kamala Harris’s Fox News interview disaster shows how the media set
her up to fail
BY BECKET ADAMS, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 10/17/24 11:22 AM ET
Vice President Kamala Harris had a bad night on Wednesday.
But more interesting than anything she said to Fox News anchor Bret Baier
was what wasn’t said — namely, that reporters hadn’t bothered until this
interview to ask her the most glaringly obvious question of 2024.
This is why she seemed so completely blindsided when Baier asked about
the role she played in the sweeping, years-long conspiracy to hide
President Biden’s declining mental fitness from the public.
The media’s failure to press her on this question until now goes beyond
mere incuriosity or sloppiness. It’s outright malpractice.
Harris fumbled through her roughly 26-minute conversation with Baier
before slinking away on complaints that her host had been too aggressive
in his questioning.
By any reasonable measure, the interview was a disaster. Don’t take my
word for it. The Democratic nominee and her team began the week hoping
her appearance would help them make inroads with Fox’s male and on-
the-fence viewers. By the time the cameras had stopped rolling, however,
her team had adopted a new line: The interview, they insisted, would go a
long way toward rallying left-wingers and Democratic loyalists. Nothing
says “that didn’t go as planned” quite like a complete narrative switch-up.
To reasonable minds, Harris’s gamble backfired. She came across as
unprepared, tedious and poorly informed. She drew little contrast
between herself and her GOP opponent — who, in fairness, likewise tends
to be unprepared, tedious and poorly informed.
Though there were many head-scratchers and uncomfortable fumbles in
the Baier interview, the critical moment came when Harris rope-a-doped
herself with the claim that former President Donald Trump is “unfit” and
too “unstable” to be president. This led to obvious follow-up questions
regarding the White House’s and her own earlier efforts to dismiss
concerns surrounding Biden’s mental and physical fitness.
“You told many interviewers that Joe Biden was on his game,” Baier said,
“that he ran around circles on his staff. When did you first notice that
President Biden’s mental faculties appeared diminished?”
Harris blanked. Then, after she had had a moment to recollect herself, she
simply dodged the question.
“Joe Biden — I have watched from the Oval Office to the Situation Room,
and he has the judgment and the experience to do exactly what he has
done in making very important decisions on behalf of the American
people,” Harris said in her trademark word salad format.
Baier pressed, “There were no concerns raised?”
“Bret, Joe Biden is not on the ballot,” said Harris, “and Donald Trump is.”
Yes, but why isn’t Biden on the ballot? This is the question, is it not? As it
turns out, Harris knows something about it, even though she went along
and played the fool until Biden was forced from his own ticket.
Recall that, following Biden’s career-ending debate performance on June
27, Harris was one of the very first administration officials to go on
television and reassure voters that all was well with the president.
“The Joe Biden that I worked with every day is someone who, as I have
said, has performed in a way that has been about bringing people into the
Oval Office, Republicans and Democrats, to compromise in a way that is
extraordinary these days,” she promised CNN viewers.
In February, she had said of her boss, “We have a very bold and vibrant
president in Joe Biden.” She also said that same month: “Our president is
in good shape, in good health, and is ready to lead in our second term.”
Even before then, she alleged, “Age is more than a chronological
fact….Not only is [Biden] absolutely authoritative in rooms around the
globe, but in the Oval Office.”
When special counsel Robert Hur described Biden as a “sympathetic,
well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Harris rushed to defend
Biden’s honor, all but accusing Hur of lying.
“So, the way that the president’s demeanor in that report was
characterized could not be more wrong on the facts and clearly politically
motivated, gratuitous,” she said.
Yet now, the mere fact of Harris’s presidential candidacy explicitly refutes
all of those earlier assurances and promises she offered.
A cleverer or better-prepared politician might have expected such an
obvious question in response to playing the “fitness” and “instability”
cards against Trump. But Harris is not cleverer or better-prepared. She
invited the natural response regarding her own attempt to push an unfit
presidential candidate on the nation — and she was utterly unprepared for
the moment.
For this, she can blame her own all-too-chummy relationship with what
should be a much more aggressive and adversarial media.
“You met with [Biden] at least once a week for three-and-a-half years,”
Baier pressed on Wednesday evening. “You didn’t have any concerns?”
“I think the American people have a concern about Donald Trump,” the
vice president deflected, “which is why the people who know him best,
including leaders of our national security community have all spoken out,
even people who worked for him in the Oval Office, worked with him in the
Situation Room and have said he is unfit and dangerous and should never
be President of the United States again, including his former vice
president, which is why the job was open for him to choose another
running mate. So that is a fact. That is a fact.”
This was the moment that stood above all others Wednesday for its
implications. It is newsworthy that Harris froze. It is newsworthy that she
declined to address his point directly. But the most newsworthy fact is
that she had no good answers to the Biden question because, until
Wednesday, nobody had ever made her answer it.
It was the only question that needed asking, yet for her, it was uncharted
territory.
How is it possible that Baier is one of the only people in this business who
has bothered to ask the Democratic nominee about her role in a plot that
ended with the current commander in chief being jettisoned from his own
re-election campaign, making way for her own unlikely accession?
For an industry addicted to the word “unprecedented,” and as we’re
currently living through times where the word really does apply, it is
baffling that journalists aren’t more curious about what Harris knew
regarding Biden’s declining mental acuity when she promised repeatedly
that he was fit as a fiddle.
Is the U.S. president quitting in the middle of a race and the nomination of
his vice president —who didn’t even make it to the Iowa caucuses when
she ran for president in 2020 — not “unprecedented” enough for our
media?
If the vice president’s involvement in a White House-wide conspiracy
doesn’t clear the bar for “public interest,” nothing does.
It was a lousy night for Harris, sure. It was also a bad night for the all-too-
friendly political press, whose kid-glove treatment of the Democratic vice
president has left her unprepared to answer even the most basic question
about policy or the events that secured her own nomination.
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