The Interview
October 17, 2024
Mike Huckabee
Wednesday, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump both made appearances before questioners who were perceived as not being especially friendly. Trump appeared before a Fox News forum of women and a Univision townhall of Latino voters. As usual with Trump, he answered even uncomfortable questions and maybe won over a few people who were predisposed by the media to hate him. Here are links to stories on both of those appearances:
And now, to the one you’ve been waiting for, the interview that has Democrats howling and some analysts saying it ended Kamala’s campaign (I don’t believe that; if the majority of her followers cared about her being prepared, competent or even coherent, her campaign never would have started.) That would be Harris’ interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier. Stories about it have used the word “trainwreck” so many times, I can’t believe Pete Buttigieg wasn’t involved.
I don’t like to be too negative, so let me start out with some praise: She finally agreed to do a live interview with Fox News and actually showed up. That showed more courage than any other interview she’s done so far (of course, most of them were with fawning fans like “The View” and Stephen Colbert. And Trump shows up to hostile media outlets almost daily. Bret Baier interviewed him last year and didn’t go easy.) Plus, she reportedly showed up 15 minutes late, forcing the scheduled 25-minute interview to be cut to 15 minutes. Baier said her handlers were frantically waving off-camera after 15 minutes to wrap it up (I can imagine why, and not because of the clock.) And there are those who say she never would have agreed to it if her internal polling wasn’t brutal...
Nevertheless, she did show up, and for that, I give her credit.
But everything beyond that…Hoo boy! This interview proved why she has only talked to fan club members up until this point. Baier was the first real interviewer she’s faced, and she imploded like the Tropicana Hotel. Some are even comparing it to Biden’s campaign-ending debate performance.
Baier asked questions that she has been asked before and should have been ready for, about illegal immigration, how her policies differ from Biden’s, when she noticed Biden’s mental decline, etc. The difference was that Baier didn’t accept the same canned, robotic non-answers she’s given before and kept asking follow-up questions to try to get a clear answer. She seemed unprepared for that and became rattled, defensive and irritated.
Perhaps the moment that best summed it up was when she ended a typical evasive word salad response with “You and I both know what I’m talking about,” and Baier replied, “I actually don’t, what are you talking about?” This was in an interview in which I lost count of how many times she said, “Let’s be clear,” then proceeded to be about as clear as Mississippi mud.
https://x.com/ClayTravis/status/1846680688189161605
I’m not going to go through every bad moment, or this would just be a full transcript. In fact, rather than tweeting the most damaging clips as campaigns usually do, the Trump campaign simply tweeted out the entire interview. It’s also sparked so many write-ups that I’ll link to some of the best:
https://twitchy.com/samj/2024/10/17/vigilant-fox-kamala-harris-fox-interview-thread-n2402313
https://redstate.com/jenniferoo/2024/10/16/kamala-harris-gives-a-train-wreck-fox-interview-n2180674
And here’s Scott Pinsker of PJ Media on the scrambling fallout over the interview…
If I had to pick the most disturbing moment for me, personally, it would be her failure to apologize to the families of Jocelyn Nungaray, Rachel Morin and Laken Riley for their deaths at the hands of criminal illegal aliens. Just saying “I am so sorry for (their) loss, sincerely,” when you at least indirectly caused it isn’t sympathy, it’s deflection.
But the line that will undoubtedly appear in hundreds of Trump ads was when Harris said, “You got to take responsibility for what happened in your Administration.” Yes, you do. So when will she start?
Democrats and the Harris-doormat media are frantically trying to spin this as a win for her…
https://twitchy.com/samj/2024/10/17/top-10-meltdowns-over-kamala-harris-fox-news-interview-n2402298
…Or to accuse Baier of “ambushing” her (with predictable questions?) Joe Scarborough called him “shockingly rude,” which I would define as showing up 15 minutes late for a live TV interview – or calling someone a Nazi, Joe. But he was just being that rarest of things in 2024: a journalist doing his job, without regard to politics.
What this interview really exposed is something that even Democrats once understood: Kamala Harris is not presidential material, which is why she didn’t even make it to the Iowa Caucuses in 2020 and had to be handed the nomination without winning a single primary vote. If she can’t even withstand an interview with Bret Baier, how is she going to stand up to Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-Un? It’s not sexist to ask that. I wouldn’t want a man in that job who couldn’t go face-to-face with our enemies, and I would never question whether a woman like Margaret Thatcher could do it.
In fact, here’s Trump dealing skillfully with an actual hostile interviewer just this week (FYI: Harris was invited to this same event, but declined.)
Here are more reactions to Harris’ Fox News interview from a number of sources. The best might be from Danny DeUrbina, who tweeted that “getting absolutely COOKED on Fox News right now is the closest Kamala has ever been to working the fries.”
https://twitchy.com/brettt/2024/10/16/im-speaking-bret-baier-interviews-kamala-harris-n2402284
I’ll give the last word to the Babylon Bee…
https://babylonbee.com/news/democrats-wondering-if-its-too-late-to-go-back-to-joe-biden