She said “we should all be concerned” about Trump’s mental state.
Vice President Kamala Harris sat down with Fox News’s Bret Baier for a heated interview on Wednesday. Her unorthodox appearance on the network was geared toward appealing to independents and Republicans who aren’t sold on another Trump administration. Here’s how it went.
Harris was asked to point out differences between her policies and Biden’s
Baier challenged Harris on the border, and on whether she’s willing to shell out taxpayer dollars for gender-transition surgery for prison inmates. He also asked her to point out the policy differences between her proposed administration and Biden’s — a question she wasn’t well-prepared for in her interviews last week on The View and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
“My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency, and like every new president that comes into office, I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences, and fresh and new ideas,” Harris told him. “I represent a new generation of leadership.”
Her remarks follow President Biden’s declaration in Philadelphia on Tuesday that “Every president has to cut their own path.” “That’s what Kamala’s going to do,” he added.
On the question of gender-affirming care for trans inmates, including undocumented migrants, Harris said “I would follow the law.”
Apparently referring to a New York Times report that revealed inmates received gender-affirming care under Trump, she added: “It’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed. You’re probably familiar with, now it’s a public report that under Donald Trump’s administration, these surgeries were available on a medical necessity basis, to people in the federal prison system.”
Harris pulled the focus to Trump
Again and again, Harris turned the spotlight back to Trump. When it came to the border issue, Harris hammered home Trump’s opposition to a bipartisan security bill.
Baier mentioned Laken Riley, the 22-year-old Georgia nursing student who was killed while jogging in February. Her suspected killer is Jose Antonio Ibarra, an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela.
“First of all, those are tragic cases. There’s no question about that,” replied Harris. “I can’t imagine the pain that the families of those victims have experienced for a loss that should not have occurred.”
“It is also true that if a border security had actually been passed nine months ago. It would be nine months that we would have had more border agents at the border, more support for the folks who are working around the clock trying to hold it all together.”
Harris added that does “not believe in decriminalizing border crossings.”
Probed about Biden’s mental state, she called Trump “unstable,” adding “we should all be concerned.”
Trump’s ‘enemy from within’ claim
Harris made repeated references to the Republicans who’ve endorsed her, including former Trump officials. She contrasted that cordial relationship with Trump’s reference to the Democrats as “the enemy from within,” and his suggestion that the military should be deployed against them.
Bair responded by playing a different clip of Trump from his Fox News town hall in which he insisted he was the one being persecuted.
“They’re the ones doing the threatening,” Trump told host Harris Faulkner in the clip. “They do phony investigations. I’ve been investigated more than Alphonse Capone was.”
Harris retorted: “With all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about the enemy within.”
“You and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people, he has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest…. He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him. This is a democracy and in a democracy, the President of the United States, in the United States of America, should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he would lock people up for doing it.”
