Kamala Harris vs. Fox News: ‘She totally schooled Bret Baier’ | Reaction

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.

Former Republican Congressman and Jan. 6 Committee member Adam Kinzinger: “She went into the lion’s den and took them on and stood tall. Fox tried their bs gotchas in their rightwing reality, and she turned everything deftly back to Trump and held him accountable in his own safe space. She did not let them bait her at all - strong, confident, epic. She totally schooled Bret Baier.”

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.

“You didn’t show that,” she said. “You and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people. He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him. This is a democracy. The President of the United States should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he’d lock people up for doing it.”

Former Sen. Claire McCaskill: “If anyone is trying to figure out who is stronger, Kamala is going on Fox News. And even the MAGA folks know he would never ever ever be brave enough to do an interview on MSNBC.”

McCaskill also reacted to Baier’s frequent interruptions:”I figured Bret Baier would be tough. I didn’t think he would be downright rude and disrespectful. The VP did great. She is strong. He is scared.”

Harris campaign adviser David Plouffe: “Kamala Harris (strong) handled an ambush Fox interview light-years better than the hash Donald Trump (unstable) made of the Fox pep rally disguised as a town hall.”

Even Fox News host Dana Perino admitted that Harris was “fairly effective” when she was getting her points across about Trump. Fox colleague Brit Hume said Harris was “combative and energetic and she certainly landed some blows on Donald Trump.”

Author David Rothkopf: “Time after time after time Kamala Harris has been tested and triumphed with flying colors. She is a much stronger candidate today than when her campaign started.” He added: “Fox prepared a warm bath for Trump and an ambush for the VP. She emerged stronger while both Trump and Fox revealed their profound weakness.”

Many on Twitter/X, like James Fallow, wondered how Trump would fair in a similar setting: “When watching Kamala Harris with Bret Baier on Fox just now, imagine for a second Donald Trump trying to answer questions for half an hour from Rachel Maddow or Lawrence O’Donnell.”

Former Obama staffer Tommy Vietor: “Kamala Harris did a great job on Fox News and showed that she can take tough questions from anyone. Also Bret Baier reminded us for the umpteenth time that he might go to all the DC book parties, but when chips are down, he’s a Murdoch/GOP employee and will do their bidding.”

Trump said on Truth Social that he would have preferred a more hard-hitting journalist conduct the Harris interview, saying Baier “is often very soft on those in the ‘cocktail circuit’ Left.”

In the days before his interview with Harris, Baier took to social media to tamp down suspicions expressed by some Fox viewers.

“No doubt she already has the list of questions. I don’t trust him,” wrote one user on Twitter/X, which Baier retweeted with an answer: “No one has the questions. Except me.”

Former New York Congressman Max Rose called it “a home run, because she sent the one message that needs to be sent, which was, ‘I will go anywhere at any time and show the courage necessary to speak to every American,’ because that’s what a real president does. The primary critique against her prior to this point was that she was not doing enough interviews. No one thought that the Fox News interview was going to go swimmingly every step of the way. Everyone knew it would be adversarial, but she showed exactly what she needed to show, which was that she is a leader, ready to be president on Day One.”

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