Harris seeks to lure winnable Republicans in Fox interview

US Vice President Kamala Harris faced a combative interview on Fox News on Wednesday, verbally sparring with anchor Bret Baier on immigration and her credibility as a change candidate.

The interview was her first foray onto the network — popular with conservative viewers — as she seeks to bolster her outreach to Republican-leaning voters less than three weeks before the November 5 election.

What happened in the interview?

Harris' nearly 30-minute sit-down with Baier was a lively one, with the two repeatedly talking over one another.

At one point, Baier kept talking when Harris tried to respond to his challenges on immigration, Harris said: "May I please finish? ... You have to let me finish, please."

In another heated moment when pushing back against Baier's line of questioning, the Democratic White House candidate said: "I would like [it] if we could have a conversation that is grounded in a full assessment of the facts."

While Harris tried multiple times to switch the conversation to attacking former US President Donald Trump, she also spoke about what a future presidency of her own might look like.

Just a week after saying she couldn't name any move made by US President Joe Biden that she would have done differently, Harris asserted, "My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden's presidency."

"Like every new president that comes into office, I will bring my life experiences, and my professional experiences and fresh and new ideas."

What did Harris say about her opponent?

Asked to clarify her assertion that she wants to "turn the page," Harris said her campaign was about "turning the page from the last decade in which we have been burdened with the kind of rhetoric coming from Donald Trump."

"People are exhausted with someone who professes to be a leader and who spends full time demeaning and engaging in personal grievances," she said, adding: "He's not stable."

On immigration — a policy area on which Harris is seen as vulnerable — she expressed regret over the deaths of women killed by people detained and then released after crossing into the US illegally during the Biden administration.

However, she criticized Trump for his role in holding up a bipartisan immigration bill earlier this year that would have increased border funding.

She said Trump had swayed lawmakers to reject the law because "he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem."

What DW's United States correspondent thought

DW Washington correspondent Janelle Dumalaon said nearly the first third of the interview was taken up by a "crosstalk-heavy back-and-forth on immigration," with Fox host Baier attempting to unsettle Harris on what is seen as her weakest issue.

"Harris repeatedly tried, with limited success, to point out that it was former President Donald Trump who got in the way of a bipartisan border bill that would have helped address high levels of irregular immigration.

"At times the interview played like an assertiveness contest, with Baier repeatedly talking over the vice-president while she fought to make herself heard.

Dumalaon said the purpose for Harris was "to present the mainstays of her stump speech to those who might not have heard them yet."

She said Harris appeared to have calculated that any share of viewers still undecided, "however few," were worth appealing to, and that she might even gain "bonus points if she can show them toughness in an adversarial situation." 

rc/msh (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)