ANALYSIS | Harris takes on Fox as she tries to woo GOP voters

() – Kamala Harris didn’t have her second debate with Donald Trump, so she went to Fox News.

The vice president got into a heated confrontation with Bret Baier, the network’s main pro-Trump host, on Wednesday night, in the kind of unscripted confrontation that Republicans have long accused her of avoiding.

Harris and Baier argued and interrupted each other, as he laid out his policy changes and retractions and she pressed her talking points. The contentious showdown, held in Pennsylvania, a swing state, had more in common with the sole debate between the vice president and the former president than with the formal interviews in which Harris has often stumbled.

“Please let me finish, you have to let me finish,” Harris said at the beginning of the interview, using a technique she has employed in the past against male rivals in congressional hearings and debates.

The vice president’s visit to Fox News showed how she is trying to conjure new turning points in a race without a clear leader and in which most of the undecided states are not defined. Trump’s decision to reject a second debate with his rival meant that the final weeks of the campaign were devoid of big scheduled moments that could change the race.

In the end, on Wednesday, both Harris and Fox News probably got what they wanted.

The vice president was combative after daring to enter the lair of conservative media and marked a contrast with Trump, who is largely avoiding television news interviews in which he will be cross-examined. He highlighted his extreme rhetoric and threats to use the Army against “internal enemies,” in a way that the channel’s viewers rarely see. His performance reinforced his new campaign tactic of creating new alarm about a second Trump term that, he said in a speech on Wednesday, would see the former president sitting in the Oval Office “plotting retaliation, brooding over his own grievances and thinking alone.” in himself and not in you.”

Harris also did some damage control after saying in an interview last week that there wasn’t much she would have done differently from the unpopular commander in chief over the past four years. “My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” Harris said. “Like every new president who comes to office, I will contribute my life and professional experiences and fresh and new ideas.”

Fox, for its part, got hours of post-interview content for its commentators. His post-debate analysis, for example, focused on Harris’ lack of response to one of Trump’s accusations: how many undocumented immigrants he had let into the country during his time in office. As the network aired highlights of the interview, it put a subtitle on the screen that said “Kamala continues her tirade against Trump.” Baier pressed Harris on issues important to conservative audiences, including the tragedies of young American girls killed by undocumented migrants – for which the vice president expressed deep sympathy – and her past support for using taxpayer dollars to fund child care. gender affirmation for transgender inmates, including undocumented immigrants. (She said she would follow the law on these types of policies as president.)

And just in case Harris changed any of its viewers’ minds, Fox aired scathing rebuttals from Trump’s eldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, and his former hardline political adviser Stephen Miller after the interview.

The tightrope Harris walked as she attempted to show presidential toughness and mettle was evident in criticism of her performance on social media, which often reproduced stereotypes directed at strong black women.

But before the interview, Harris spokesman Ian Sams explained his thinking. He noted that Fox’s high ratings include some undecided voters and Democrats. And she said Harris wanted those viewers to hear her directly.

The Fox interview capped another day in which Harris tried to appeal to a small number of voters who could make a difference in the most contested battlegrounds, less than three weeks before a closely contested election.

After courting black male voters on Tuesday, he traveled to the so-called “Keystone State” of Pennsylvania to try to appeal to Republicans who are unhappy with Trump’s undemocratic behavior. Appearing accompanied by former Republican lawmakers and officials expelled from their party by Trump, the vice president noted that finding her in such company would normally be surprising.

But he added: “Not in this election, because at stake in this race are the democratic ideas that our founders and generations of Americans fought for before us. “In these elections the Constitution of the United States is at stake.”

Democrats believe there may be a significant number of GOP voters, including some who voted for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the Republican primary, who could be persuaded to vote for Harris next month. If just a few thousand Fox viewers or traditional conservatives switched sides, it could push some swing states in the vice president’s direction. Still, the risk for Harris is that her exposure in her first formal interview on Fox News could alienate some of those voters. And the hundred Republicans who appeared with her this Wednesday in Bucks County, a critical suburb of Philadelphia, in many cases represented the past of the Republican Party, left behind in the populist transformation designed by Trump.

At that Pennsylvania rally, Harris reinforced her new tough tone against Trump, calling him “increasingly unstable and unhinged.” He also raised questions about his age and abilities, turning the tables on the 78-year-old former president, who often used the same strategy against Biden when he was in the race.

In many of his recent appearances, Trump seemed to play along with Harris’ claims. This Wednesday, for example, he reaffirmed his false claims that Haitian immigrants were eating dogs and cats in Ohio. He told a Univision community forum with undecided Latino voters that the refugees, who are in the country legally, were “also eating other things that they’re not supposed to.”

The Republican candidate also proclaimed himself “the father of in vitro fertilization” in his latest attempt to distance himself from the chaos in women’s reproductive health after the conservative majority of the Supreme Court, which he built, struck down the right. constitutional to abort throughout the country. Harris later told reporters the comment was “bizarre” as she seeks to use subsequent state-level abortion restrictions to widen the gender gap that could help her defeat Trump.

And as Democrats increasingly highlight Trump’s perceived threat to American democracy, Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance insisted that the former president did not lose the last elections. “I have answered this question directly a million times: No. I think there were serious problems in 2020,” the Ohio Republican said. “So, did Donald Trump lose the election? Not with the words I would use, okay?”

Trump, meanwhile, insisted in a Univision community forum that January 6, 2021 – one of the most notorious days in US history – was a “day of love” and that there was “nothing wrong done in absolute”.

Any of Trump’s recent comments would have disqualified a conventional candidate. But it is a mark of how he has transformed American politics that his base of support is impervious to outrageous or outlandish behavior.

And there is no doubt that Trump, despite his crudeness and breaking restrictions meant to rein in demagogue leaders, is the authentic voice of tens of millions of Americans.

Harris is also hampered by a discouraging political environment. He is a member of an unpopular administration at a time when many Americans continue to feel the effects of high inflation that the White House often downplays and are frustrated by the still high prices of rent, vehicles and groceries.

It has taken him several months to reach the certainty that it would mark a strong contrast with the Biden Government, which he revealed in the interview with Fox News. In itself, that is a reflection of her difficulties as a presidential candidate. And his difficulty early in the Fox interview in effectively answering some of Baier’s questions about immigration showed that the issue remains a weakness and could be a significant impediment to his efforts to appeal to GOP defectors.

Still, the fact that she dared to do the interview could help her with undecided voters. And, if nothing else, his appearance served to highlight how the conservative and Trump media machines are virtually indistinguishable from each other.