US vice president Kamala Harris engaged in a combative interview with Fox News on Wednesday, sparring with broadcaster Bret Baier on immigration and shifting policy positions while asserting that if elected, she would not represent a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency.
Ms Harris’ interview marked her first foray onto the network, which is popular with conservative viewers, as she looked to broaden her outreach to Republican-leaning voters with less than three weeks until election day.
Her nearly 30-minute sit-down with Mr Baier grew repeatedly heated, with the two talking over each other.
When Mr Baier kept talking as Ms Harris tried to respond to his challenges on immigration, the vice president said: “May I please finish? … You have to let me finish, please.”
Ms Harris tried repeatedly to pivot the conversation to attacking former US president Donald Trump. But she also had plenty to say about herself.
A week after saying she could not think of any move made by Mr Biden that she would have done differently, Ms Harris said: “My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency.”
Ms Harris did not offer specifics, but she said: “Like every new president that comes into office, I will bring my life experiences, and my professional experiences and fresh and new ideas.”
Asked to clarify her assertion that she wanted to “turn the page”, despite Democrats currently holding the White House, Ms Harris said she was running on “turning the page from the last decade in which we have been burdened with the kind of rhetoric coming from Donald Trump”.
On immigration, Ms Harris expressed regret over the deaths of women who were killed by people who were detained and then released after crossing into the US illegally during the Biden administration, but she criticised Mr Trump for his role in blocking a bipartisan immigration bill earlier this year that would have boosted border funding.
“I am so sorry for her loss, sincerely,” Ms Harris said after Mr Baier played footage of the mother of Jocelyn Nungaray blaming Mr Biden and Ms Harris for her daughter’s death.
Ms Harris indicated she no longer supported decriminalising crossing the border illegally, as she did in 2019.
“That was five years ago and I am very clear that I will follow the law,” she said.
She gave the same answer about proposals to allow people in the US illegally to get driver’s licences and subsidised healthcare.
On Mr Trump, she said: “People are exhausted with someone who professes to be a leader and who spends full-time demeaning and engaging in personal grievances.”
She added: “He’s not stable.”
She also sought to focus Fox viewers on Mr Trump’s talk of “the enemy within” and threats to punish political rivals.
Mr Trump’s campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Ms Harris was “angry, defensive, and once again abdicated any responsibility for the problems Americans are facing”.
She added that if “Kamala can’t handle the pressure of an interview with Fox News, she certainly can’t handle the pressure of being president of the United States”.
Ms Harris’s campaign spokesperson Brian Fallon said her team felt she “achieved what we set out to achieve” with the Special Report host.
“She was able to reach an audience that has probably been not exposed to the arguments she’s been making on the trail and she also got to show her toughness in standing tall against a hostile interviewer,” he said.
