WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris angrily dodged questions on border policy, Iran and President Biden’s fitness for office in an contentious interview with Fox News host Bret Baier — as more polls showed her losing the initiative in the race for the White House.
The 26-minute interview with the Democratic nominee kicked off with a tense grilling by Baier on immigration policy — with Harris repeatedly refusing to say that terminating former President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy was a mistake.
Baier’s first question schooled Harris about the effects of the current administration’s more permissive policies, which allow many illegal border-crossers to await asylum rulings inside the US, before asking how many migrants had been allowed into the US after crossing illegally.
When Harris declined to offer a figure, Baier said “it’s a rough estimate of six million people released into the country” before pressing her: “Looking back, do you regret the decision to terminate ‘Remain in Mexico’ at the beginning of your administration?”
Harris began to deploy standard campaign-trail talking points, insisting that the administration’s “first bill, practically within hours of taking the oath, was a bill to fix our immigration system.”
Baier interjected, “it was essentially a pathway to citizenship” for illegal immigrants already in the country.
“May I finish responding, please? But you have to let me finish, please,” the veep said sternly.
“You had the White House and the House and the Senate and they didn’t bring up that bill,” Baier said.
“I’m in the middle to responding to the point that you’re raising and I’d like to finish,” she reprimanded. We recognized from day one … it is a priority for us as a nation … and our focus has been on fixing a problem.”
Baier noted that the bill cited by Harris would have allowed 1.8 million asylum-seekers who illegally crossed the border into the country each year and that six Senate Democrats voted against it.
“Jocelyn Nungaray, Rachel Morin, Laken Riley, they are young women who were brutally assaulted and killed by some of the men who were released at the beginning of the administration, well before a negotiated bipartisan bill,” Baier pressed.
“Former President Clinton actually referred to Laken Riley Sunday campaigning for you in Georgia, saying if those men had been properly vetted, Laken Riley probably would not have been killed…This is a specific policy decision by your administration to release these men into the country. So what I’m saying to you, do you owe those families really an apology?”
Harris replied, without accepting blame for the tragedies, “I can’t imagine the pain that the families of those victims have experienced for a loss that should not have occurred.”
“It was a policy decision in the early part of your administration,” Baier pressed, before playing a clip of Nungaray’s mother testifying to Congress this year that “I believe the Biden-Harris administration’s open border policies are responsible for the death of my daughter.”
“I feel awful for what she and her family have experienced,” Harris said.
Baier pivoted into questioning the vice president on her support in 2019 as a Democratic presidential primary candidate for decriminalizing border crossings.
“I do not believe in decriminalizing border crossings and I’ve not done that as vice president. I will not do that as president,” Harris said, confirming her policy evolution on the matter.
When pressed on her 2019 support for taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgeries for federal prisoners, including illegal immigrants, Harris countered that “I will follow the law, and it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed.”
When Baier pointed out that there were no such surgeries under Trump, Harris countered, “well, you know, you gotta take responsibility for what happened in your administration” — triggering a deluge of online commentary about her own refusal to do so.
Later in the interview, Harris dodged questions on whether she believes that it’s time to tighten the enforcement of oil sanctions against Iran and about when she realized that Biden, 81, appeared to be in cognitive decline, which prompted the Democratic mutiny that forced him to relinquish the party’s nomination on July 21.
“Critics say that you either relaxed or failed to enforce sanctions on Iran, allowing all of this money to flow into Iran, like billions in oil profits,” Baier said.
“Let’s go back to Donald Trump, who pulled out of, who pulled out of the deal that would have actually put Iran in check,” Harris countered, referring to the 45th president’s decision to end the Obama-era nuclear deal and instead ramp up sanctions on Tehran.
Harris and Baier talked over each other as the journalist said, “Madam vice president, all of this money that has gone in the past few years, critics say that it goes to Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis.”
The vice president said, “I would like that we would have a conversation that is grounded in full assessment of the facts.”
A bipartisan coalition of 62 House members — including Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell of California — in January asked Biden to fully enforce US sanctions on Iranian oil exports after sales surged, now roughly tripling Iran’s annual export levels in 2019 or 2020.
“Iran now exports more than 1.4 million barrels of crude oil daily, over 80% of which goes to China. From February 2021 to October 2023, the regime has taken at least $88 billion from these illicit oil exports,” wrote the group. “Iran is deriving significant economic benefits from pervasive sanctions evasion, with Iran’s annual economic growth increasing by more than four percent and net foreign currency reserves up by 45[%].”
Harris also refused to address when she noticed that Biden was slowing cognitively.
“When did you first notice that President Biden’s mental faculties appeared diminished?” Baier asked.
“Joe Biden, I have watched him from the Oval Office to the Situation Room, and he has the judgment and experience to do exactly what he has done in making very important decisions on behalf of the American people. Bret, Joe Biden is not on the ballot,” she deflected.
Baier pressed: “You met with him at least once a week for three and a half years. You didn’t have any concerns?”
Harris redirected, “I think the American people have a concern about Donald Trump, which is why the people who know him best, including leaders of our national security community, have all spoken out.”
The Democratic nominee is currently trailing Trump in swing states Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania while only narrowly leading in Wisconsin, according to the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls.
