On the menu today: We didn’t get a second debate between Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, but perhaps last night gave us something even better — Harris forced to face tough questions about the Biden administration’s record from a questioner who cared about the details and wasn’t going to let her filibuster. Meanwhile, speaking before a union in Philadelphia, President Biden boasts that he can’t wait to see Donald Trump get sentenced for his felony convictions.
Kamala Harris Filibusters the Press
For a long stretch, Americans have hungered for real leadership. We’ve yearned for a figure who was sharp, well-versed on all the tough issues on our national political scene, and not afraid to get into the details. A level-headed thinker who challenges assumptions and rejects the knee-jerk rhetoric and partisan talking points. Someone on the hunt for genuine answers to the country’s questions, with little patience for blather. Whether it’s a moment of crisis or a relatively normal evening, we just want to turn on the television and see someone talking to us who’s poised, reassuring, and direct.
Finally, last night, the 2024 presidential campaign delivered us that figure.
The only problem is that Bret Baier isn’t running for president.
Last night marked the first time that Vice President Kamala Harris had ever sat down for a formal interview with Fox News. She had never done so as California state attorney general, or U.S. senator, or presidential candidate, or as vice president.
Last night was also probably the last time she’ll ever agree to an interview with Fox News.
You can watch the whole thing here. Whether or not you liked the answers, credit Baier for asking questions that just weren’t going to come up on Call Her Daddy.
First question, out of the gate: “How many illegal immigrants would you estimate your administration has released into the country in the last three and a half years?”
Harris began with some boilerplate about how she was glad Baier brought it up, and how she believed immigration is “a topic of discussion that people want to rightly have, and, you know what I’m going to talk about,” before Baier made his first interruption:
BAIER: Yes, but do you — just a number. Do you think it’s 1 million, 3 million?
HARRIS: But — but — Bret, let’s just get to the point, OK?
The point is that we have a broken immigration system that needs to be repaired. And . . .
BAIER: So, your homeland-security secretary said that 85 percent of apprehensions . . .
HARRIS: Well, I’m not — but I’m not finished. I’m not finished. We have — but we have an immigration system that needs to be fixed.
BAIER: It’s a rough estimate of 6 million people have been released into the country. And let me just finish. I will get to the question. I promise you.
HARRIS: I was beginning to answer.
I strongly suspect that Harris did not know the figure Baier was looking for, and just knew it was “a lot,” somewhere in the millions. Harris does not know that estimated figure, because she does not want to know it. (Human beings tend to know a lot about the subjects that matter the most to them and tend to know very little about the sorts of things that don’t matter to them.) My beginning of this column was flippant, but it’s clear that Baier knows more details about the Biden administration’s immigration policies and decisions, and can speak about them more fluently, than the vice president can:
BAIER: And when you came into office, your administration immediately reversed a number of Trump border policies, most significantly the policy that required illegal immigrants to be detained through deportation either in the U.S. or in Mexico. And you switched that policy. They were released from custody awaiting trial. So, instead, included in those were a large number of single men, adult men who went on to commit heinous crimes. So, looking back, do you regret the decision to terminate remain-in-Mexico at the beginning of your administration?
HARRIS: At the beginning of our administration, within practically hours of taking the oath, the first bill that we offered Congress, before we worked on infrastructure, before the Inflation Reduction Act, before the CHIPS and Science ACT, before any — before the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first bill, practically within hours of taking the oath, was a bill to fix our immigration system.
Instead of giving a yes or a no to a tough but fair question — these are the consequences of the administration’s policy decisions! — Harris again filibusters, emphasizing how early on they had tried to pass an immigration bill. (Note her repeated phrase, “practically within hours of taking the oath.”)
Baier pointed out that the bill Harris referred to, the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, “would create an eight-year pathway to citizenship for nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S.” The bill has never been voted out of committee, no matter which party controlled the House.
Harris went on to give a fairly generic sales pitch for that bill:
We recognized from Day One that, to the point of this being your first question, it is a priority for us as a nation and for the American people. And our focus has been on fixing a problem. And from Day One, then, we have done a number of things, including to address our asylum system and put more resources, getting more judges, what we needed to do to tighten up penalties and increase penalties for illegal crossings, what we needed to do to deal with ports — points of entry between border entry points.
That’s the work we did. And we worked on supporting what was a bipartisan effort, including some of the most conservative members of the United States Congress, to actually strengthen the border.
That border bill would have put 1,500 more border agents at the border, which is why I believe the Border Patrol agents supported the bill. It would have allowed us to stem the flow of fentanyl coming into the United States, which is a scourge affecting people of every background, every geographic location in our country, killing people. It would have allowed us to put more resources into prosecuting transnational criminal organizations, which I have done as the attorney general — former attorney general, of a border state.
“You told many interviewers that Joe Biden was on his game, that [he] ran around circles on his staff. When did you first notice that President Biden’s mental faculties appeared diminished?”
“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,”
“There were no concerns raised?” Baier followed.
“Bret, Joe Biden is not on the ballot . . . and Donald Trump is,” Harris responded.
“You met with him at least once a week for three-and-a-half years. You didn’t have any concerns?” Baier pressed.
“I think the American people have a concern about Donald Trump,” Harris responded. “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.”
Apparently, when Harris says she wants to “turn the page,” she means turning the page from Trump, which . . . the nation did three and a half years ago:
“Your campaign slogan is ‘a new way forward,’ and it’s time to turn the page. You’ve been vice president for three and a half years. So what are you turning the page from?” Baier asked.
“Well, first of all, turning the page from the last decade in which we’ve been burdened with the kind of rhetoric coming from Donald Trump that has been designed and implemented to divide our country and have Americans literally point fingers at each other, rhetoric and an approach to leadership that suggests that the strength of a leader is based on who you beat down instead of what we all know: The strength of leadership is based on who you lift up,” Harris said.
Her presidency will be a continuation of Joe Biden’s policies, with a fresher face instead of a geriatric shuffling around the White House.
This morning, the spin from the Harris fanbase and figures like Obama adviser David Plouffe was that it was an “ambush” interview. (Was the vice president expecting softballs?)
The New York Times fumes Baier “repeatedly interrupted the vice president and tried to talk over her” — no doubt they had to resist the urge to accuse Baier of “mansplaining.” We’ve all seen interview subjects, including Harris, “filibuster” by answering the question she wished she had been asked and then veer off into other subjects. Baier knew he wasn’t getting any other shots at this, and the interview was only 25 minutes.
Even the Times admits, “Harris, who is known as an effective practitioner of the filibuster . . .” and Politico concedes, “She didn’t always answer his questions outright.”
Our Jeff Blehar is more blunt, calling Harris’s answers “annoyingly substance-free mush.”
This is why any major political figure who wants to be president should be doing adversarial interviews regularly. In an older, better time, presidential candidates had to face the “Tim Russert primary.” (As Campbell Brown put it shortly after Russert passed away, “You had to be vetted by Tim before you could almost proceed with your campaign. And it was — it was mandatory, that stop, and to not only make that stop but to do well with him.”)
As vice president, Harris’s interviews and press conferences grew rarer and rarer until she became the Democratic presidential nominee. You don’t get better at something by avoiding doing it. The only way to be a better swimmer is to swim more. The only way to get better at tough interviews is to do more of them.
ADDENDUM: President Biden, speaking to the Sheet Metal Workers International Association in Philadelphia this week:
THE PRESIDENT: And, folks, look, this is the same guy who has been held liable for $83 million for sexual abuse and mu- — and defamation. Same guy, for getting rid of Roe v. Wade. The same guy who has three other major cases waiting for him when he loses.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thirty-four felonies!
THE PRESIDENT: And, by the way, 34 felonies. And so far, he hadn’t gotten sentenced. He got the sentence kicked back, but I want to watch that sentence. (Laughter.) [Emphasis added.]
Yes, it is egregious when Donald Trump claims the 2020 election was rigged and pledges, “Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.” But it’s what we’ve come to expect from the guy who jumps on Truth Social and rants about how “Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
Biden and his team were supposed to be something better. A president gleefully boasting about how much he can’t wait to see his chief rival tried and sentenced is not something better.