Vice President Harris speaks Wednesday at a campaign event at Washington Crossing Historic Park in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania.

Ryan Collerd/AFP via Getty Images

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Ryan Collerd/AFP via Getty Images

In her first-ever formal sit-down interview with Fox News, Vice President Harris repeatedly clashed with host Bret Baier as he pressed her on immigration policies and positions she took in 2019 as she ran for president. no longer holds.

About halfway through the intense 30-minute interview, Baier asked Harris a question that she didn’t answer very well last week in friendlier interviews on The view and on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: What would she do differently than President Biden? This time she was prepared.

“My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency, and like any new president who comes to power, I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences and fresh and new ideas,” Harris said. “I represent a new generation of leadership.”

Harris ventured into the openly pro-Trump Network on a mission to reach moderate Republicans after appearing earlier in the day with more than 100 Republicans, including former Trump administration officials who supported her.

She took every opportunity to mention these endorsements and made sure to reference former President Donald Trump’s recent comments calling Democrats “the enemy within.” He has also said he may have to deploy the military to tackle that enemy.

In a town hall with women voters that aired on Fox News earlier in the day, Trump doubled down on that statement, saying, “It’s the enemy from within, and they’re very dangerous; they are Marxists and communists and fascists and they are sick.”

But Baier played another part of Trump’s response for Harris, one in which Trump insisted he is not threatening anyone.

“They are the ones threatening,” Trump told Fox host Harris Faulkner. “They do false studies. More research has been done on me than on Alphonse Capone.”

This provoked an indignant response from Harris.

“With all due respect, that excerpt was not what he said about the enemy within,” Harris said, raising the volume.

“You and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military against the American people, about going after people engaged in peaceful protest,” Harris said. “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 take criticism without saying he would lock people up for it.”

Trump Campaign National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described the interview as a “train wreck.”

“Kamala was angry, defensive and again abdicated any responsibility for the problems Americans face.”

The Harris campaign, for its part, called the interview a success.

“We feel like we’ve definitely achieved what we set out to achieve, in the sense that she’s been able to reach an audience that probably hasn’t been exposed to the arguments she’s made along the way,” said Brian Fallon, a principal Harris campaign staff. “And she also got to show her toughness by holding her own against a hostile interviewer.”

Harris blamed Trump for sinking a border security bill

On immigration, Harris expressed condolences for the parents of young women killed in the U.S. by undocumented immigrants, but did not accept blame, as Baier urged her to do. She repeatedly referred to a bipartisan border security deal that failed to pass after Trump called on Republicans to undermine it.

On the federal government’s payment for gender transition operations for trans prisoners or detained migrants, something Trump has spent millions of dollars on in ads demonizing Harris for supporting, she said she would follow federal law. Harris also pointed to evidence that the Trump administration followed the same law.

“He spent $20 million on those ads to create a sense of fear among voters because he doesn’t actually have a plan in this election that focuses on the needs of the American people,” said Harris, who addressed the issue of the gender transition. prisoner operations are “really quite remote” compared to the biggest issues impacting American voters.