Bret Baier slams Kamala Harris for being late to testy interview and accuses her of ‘icing the kicker’
Fox News host Bret Baier revealed some rocky details about his controversial interview with Kamala Harris, including that she showed up very late to their conversation.
Baier suggested it was as if the vice president’s team was trying to “freeze the kicker,” comparing it to a football team calling a timeout before a big field goal attempt in an NFL game.
The vice president’s team also tried to shorten the time allotted for the recorded but unedited interview, the host said during an on-air conversation about their chat after it aired.
Baier said members of Harris’ campaign frantically waved their arms as they tried to wrap up the interview.
“We were supposed to start at 5 p.m., this was the time they gave,” Baier explained of his interview with the Democratic presidential candidate.
“Originally we were going to do 25 or 30 minutes, but they came in and said ‘maybe 20.’ So it was already getting smaller.’
Fox News host Bret Baier revealed some rocky details from his interview with Kamala Harris — including that she was late and broke off their sit-down
“And then the vice president showed up at about 5:15 p.m. – we were moving the envelope around so we could turn it around at about 6 p.m.”
“So that’s how it started,” he continued. “And as we started talking, I noticed it was going to be difficult to redirect her without trying to interrupt her.”
Baier grilled the vice president for 20 minutes during her first-ever interview with the conservative news network, taped Wednesday in Pennsylvania and broadcast half an hour later.
The pair clashed several times, including when Baier pressured her to answer his question about making sex change operations for prisoners a priority.
The host explained how Harris’ team frantically tried to get him to wrap up their interview when things got heated.
Early in the interview, while sparring about immigration, Harris even told the host “You need to let me finish” as he pressed her on the issue, in an attempt to get her to answer very specific questions rather than backtracking to some of her talking points, which she did at every turn.
It was one of several times during the interview — which some viewers later described as “a total train wreck” — where they spoke over each other, and the vice president asked the Fox News host to stop interrupting her.
“I’m talking like four people are waving their hands like ‘it has to stop,’” Baier described to his Special Report panel when explaining how the interview ended.
“I finally had to get off that,” Baier shrugged.
He added, “There are so many things and maybe she should do more of that.”
VP Harris and Baier clashed during their interview on several topics, including the issue of the southern border
Trump praised Baier for his “tough but very fair” interview with Harris and claimed the sit-down is further evidence that her “inferior cognitive skills need to be tested.”
Donald Trump congratulated Baier on his “tough but very honest interview” after MAGA social media users speculated ahead of the broadcast that Fox would favorably edit the Democratic presidential candidate.
Trump wrote on X and his social media site Truth Social: “Great work by Bret Baier in his interview with Lyin’ Kamala Harris. She has a massive and irreparable case of TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”
He added that Baier’s interview “clearly demonstrated how totally incompetent Kamala is” and insisted that her “inferior cognitive skills needed to be tested.”
Harris did the interview after a campaign event in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, before leaving for Wisconsin on Wednesday evening.
The testy interview came as the vice president was pressured to make more unscripted appearances and interviews as she tried to reach more voters.
After the interview aired, the Harris campaign posted a series of clips from the interview on social media and promoted moments of praise from commentators responding to Fox News and CNN after it aired.
After the vice president’s plane landed Wednesday evening, campaign communications director Brian Fallon spoke briefly to reporters traveling with the vice president’s press pool about the interview.
“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 and she’s also been able to show her strength in standing. long to a hostile interviewer,” he said, according to a pool report.