Did Kamala's Fox News Meltdown Just End Her Campaign?

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

When we learned that Kamala Harris had agreed to an interview on Fox News Channel's "Special Report" with Bret Baier, it was a telltale sign that the Harris-Walz campaign knew it was losing the election. Harris, upon becoming the Democratic Party's presumptive presidential nominee, refused to do any interviews or press conferences, limiting her public appearances to highly controlled and scripted events.

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Then, suddenly, she started doing interviews with friendly networks. Nothing risky. No hard questions. No substance. Lather, rinse, repeat. 

Kamala thought these softball interviews would work, but none delivered the results the Harris-Walz campaign hoped for. Last week, CNN’s Dana Bash acknowledged that Harris’s team is aware these efforts weren’t working, reinforcing the sense of desperation behind this media blitz.

Clearly, going on Fox News was a Hail Mary, and it was bad. You could tell right away it wasn't going to go well for her. She was evasive, often filibustering with word salads to run down the clock and prevent Baier from asking questions she didn't want to answer.

       Related: Kamala Shouts, Whines, Cannot Answer Basic Questions in Fox Interview

The shouting was a terrible look for her. So was talking over Baier, refusing to let him finish asking questions, and then proceeding to pivot away and respond with her rehearsed lines, even when they didn't actually answer the question she was asked. If she didn't want to answer a question, she just didn't. 

And she got nasty at times.

She even refused to apologize to the families of women who were assaulted and killed by illegal immigrants allowed into the country thanks to Biden-Harris border policies.

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Things got bizarre when she tried to blame Trump for the situation. She's often leaned on the "bipartisan" border bill from earlier this year, which isn't a very good talking point anyway, but when asked repeatedly by Baier about the period before that bill, she had nothing to say.

You've gotta hand it to Bret Baier. He asked a lot of hard-hitting questions, all of which were completely fair, and she didn't want to answer them.  And she repeatedly talked over him as he was trying to ask questions.

"When did you first notice that President Biden's mental faculties appeared diminished?" he asked.

She launched right into canned talking points. "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 in making important decisions on behalf of the American people."

Non-answer. Complete avoidance of the question, and when Baier pressed on the issue, her response was to deflect by saying, "Joe Biden isn't on the ballot."

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It would have been great if Baier had said, "And the reason for that is...?" but he didn't.

Still, Baier did a great job under the circumstances. And it turns out the Harris campaign went to great lengths to make the interview as short as possible. 

First, they arrived late.

"You know, when the kicker in football, they call a timeout, right before he's gonna kick the field goal. They're icing the kicker," Baier pointed out on Fox News after the interview aired. "So we were supposed to start at 5 p.m.—this was the time they gave us. Originally, we're gonna do 25 or 30 minutes. They came in and said, well, maybe twenty."

"So it was already getting whittled down," he continued.  "And then, the vice president showed up about 5:15. We were pushing the envelope to be able to turn it around for the top of the 6 o'clock [airing]. So, that's how it started. And I could tell when we started talking that she was going to be tough to, you know, redirect—without me trying to interrupt. I did this with President Obama. At one point, I just said, 'Mister President, I know you like to filibuster.' I just didn't even have the chance to sometimes redirect in those ways. I had a lot of other questions."

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And then they tried to end it early because it was such a disaster.

It's hard to see how anyone could think this interview went well for her. It was really something to watch. What do you think? Did her Hail Mary work, or did she just blow up her campaign?

You can check out the whole thing here:

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