Vice President Kamala Harris’ conversation with Fox News’ Bret Baier was not an interview; it was a competition. Baier tried to convince Harris to give non-winning answers to sometimes loaded questions. Harris’ goal seemed to be getting through the thirty-minute conversation without lapsing into nondescript word salad answers too often. I don’t know if I would call the end result a draw, but it certainly wasn’t a knockout.

Baier jumped right in, urging Harris to answer for the Biden administration’s decision to immediately reverse the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases were being adjudicated by U.S. immigration courts. Baier said the administration’s border policy allowed 6 million undocumented immigrants into the country and asked whether she regretted reversing the policy. Harris tried to pivot, countering that the Biden administration has pushed for immigration reform in Congress since day one.

It was fair and good journalistic practice for Baier to press the vice president on policies that her own administration seems to understand have failed and created terrible public perception. But when Baier repeatedly asked Harris if she felt she owed an apology to the families of Rachel Nungaray, Laken Riley and Rachel Morin — three young women allegedly killed by migrants who crossed the border illegally — his line of questioning changed. in demagogy.

Of all the issues to be asked of the Democratic nominee, Baier then took a lightning rod on the culture war, asking whether she supports government-funded trans-affirming surgeries for prisoners — the focal point of countless pro-Trump campaign ads, but hardly the kind of “kitchen table” issue that supposedly motivates the economic populism of Trump’s base.

When Harris noted that former Trump administration officials have said Trump is unfit for office, Baier essentially acted as a surrogate for the Trump campaign: “If that’s the case, why is half the country supporting him ? Why is he beating you in a lot of swing states? Why, if he is as bad as you say, is half of this country now supporting this person who could be the 47th President of the United States? Why does that happen?”

Harris responded that the election was never meant to be a cakewalk, to which Baier interjected: “So are they deluded, the 50%? Are they stupid? What is it?” You could almost see the hamster spinning the wheel in Baier’s head, hoping for a hearty bite to rival Hillary Clinton’s infamous 2016 “basket of deplorables” comment.

But Harris wasn’t buying it, saying she would never call the American people such a thing, and she reminded Baier that Trump is the one who regularly humiliates Americans, like when he spoke to Fox News’ ‘Sunday Morning Futures’ of “the enemy within .”

Baier immediately called for playing a clip of Trump’s interview earlier in the day with Fox News’ Harris Faulkner, in which Trump drew laughter from the live audience by comparing himself to Al Capone and insisting that his “enemies within” were simply limited to the Democrats who investigated him. That Baier considered Trump’s comment Wednesday morning to be credible and an appropriate counterpoint to Harris’ statement is journalistic malpractice.

As one of the last remaining “hard news” correspondents at Fox News, Baier has a reputation as a well-prepared interviewer who doesn’t let politicians get away with filibustering. But compare the intensity of his questioning and fact-checking of Harris to Baier’s interview with Trump in June 2023. He put pressure on Trump effectively at times, was respectful to others, but what he didn’t do was carry water for the Democrats or break out. their topics of conversation.

Harris, for her part, continues to struggle in interviews, clinging to the campaign’s talking points like a life raft. She was particularly unconvincing when asked about President Joe Biden’s declining mental faculties. But she had successful moments on Wednesday night, especially when she spoke off the cuff about specific, indefensible things Trump has done and promised to do.

Fox News’ Dana Perino predictably said after the interview that Harris was “excited and getting angrier,” but that’s not how I saw it. She participated in an interview with a network where she is regularly labeled “stupid,” and she responded in a tone that matched Baier’s.

I’m not sure this interview will change your mind, and not much has been revealed. But if you judge it as a martial art, the result was inconclusive. Both sides landed punches, but neither managed to lift a championship belt.