Vice President Kamala Harris was grilled over her shifting views on immigration and relationship with President Joe Biden during a Wednesday interview with Fox News.
The 25-minute sitdown with anchor Bret Baier was contentious from start to finish in what amounted to one of the first times the vice president has given an interview on an adversarial network.
The interview was dominated by immigration, with Harris repeatedly sidestepping questions from how many illegal immigrants she estimates the Biden administration has released into the country to whether she and Biden regret repealing former President Donald Trump‘s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forced most asylum-seekers to wait outside the United States for their applications to be processed.
“You have to let me finish,” Harris told Baier during one of several interruptions as she discussed immigration proposals Biden had put forward while in office.
At another point, Baier asked Harris whether she and Biden owed the families of Rachel Morin, Jocelyn Nungaray, and Laken Riley, three women allegedly killed by illegal immigrants, an apology for their policies.
“I can’t imagine the pain that the families of those victims have experienced for a loss that should not have occurred,” Harris said.
Although Harris acknowledged the families’ loss, she did not respond to a question about when she recognized the border situation was a crisis.
“We’ve had a broken immigration system, transcending, by the way, Donald Trump’s administration, even before,” she said. “Let’s all be honest about that. I have no pride in saying that this is a perfect immigration system. I’ve been clear.”
The second section of the interview covered Harris’s past policy positions, including whether illegal border crossings should be decriminalized, a stance she held during her 2020 presidential campaign.
“I do not believe in decriminalizing border crossings, and I’ve not done that as vice president,” she said. “I will not do that as president.”
With the campaign being amplified by television ads, Harris was also asked about her support for taxpayer-funded sex reassignment surgeries for prisoners in 2019, a position that Trump has highlighted in battleground TV spots.
“I will follow the law, and it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed,” she said. “That ad is a little like throwing stones when you live in a glass house.”
In another standout moment, Harris was pushed for the third time in the past week to distinguish herself from Biden, as a majority of voters tell pollsters the country is headed in the wrong direction. Last week, Harris did not have a reaction prepared when she was posed the same question by ABC’s The View.
“Let me be very clear: My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” she said. “I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences, and fresher, new ideas. I represent a new generation of leadership.”
Baier additionally asked Harris when she first understood Biden was having problems because of his age and mental acuity. Harris has publicly remained loyal to Biden, despite replacing him as the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee this summer.
“Joe Biden, I have watched from the Oval Office to the Situation Room, and he has the judgment and the experience to do what he has done,” she said.
The wide-ranging interview covered the economy and foreign policy, too, with Harris defending the Biden administration’s posture toward Tehran and her assessment during last week’s CBS 60 Minutes interview that Iran is the country’s “greatest adversary.”
Harris’s interview on a right-leaning network comes after she appeared earlier Wednesday in Pennsylvania where George Washington crossed the Delaware River during the American Revolutionary War, with more than 100 Republicans, including former Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, in attendance.
In an address that appealed to patriotism and national unity, Harris spoke about putting country over party and told pro-rule-of-law Republicans, “There is a place for you in this campaign.” The vice president also reiterated her criticism of Trump for warning of “the enemy from within” in a recent interview.
Importantly, her Wednesday campaign stop was also in Bucks, one of Pennsylvania’s most competitive counties. Biden won it by 4 percentage points in 2020, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by less than a point in 2016, and former President Barack Obama by about 2 points in 2012.
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Harris is appealing to Republicans to make up for a lack of support among minority voters who have traditionally cast ballots for Democrats, including black and Latino men, with events this month with former Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney and Arizona Republicans in Scottsdale.
Meanwhile, Trump appeared on Fox News earlier Wednesday to pitch himself to female voters during a female-only town hall. A Trump interview with Univision is scheduled to be broadcast later Wednesday night.
