Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris sat for an interview with Fox News anchor Bret Baier on Wednesday night and skewered Republican nominee and former president Donald Trump on several occasions.
…
Lincoln Project founder Rick Wilson: “Kamala came to Fox to stack bodies.”
In the most controversial part of the interview, Baier played a clip of Trump insisting that liberals were the enemy because he has been investigated “more than Al Capone.” When Baier asked for Harris’ reaction, she pounced:
“With all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about the ‘enemy within’ that he has repeated when he’s speaking about the American people,” Harris said. “That’s not what you just showed.”
Baier tried to interrupt, but Harris kept going.
Don’t we, as people opposed to a Trump presidency, wish interviewers were more controlling over a Trump as he avoids direct questions?
I don’t know how long you’ve been around to observe political discourse but no politician ever directly answers a question. This was something I observed as a child watching presidential debates. It annoyed the heck out of me - just answer the question. Instead, they take a kernel of the question to reply with a scripted response. It’s what they’re trained to do. This is more problematic today as responses are edited and reposted on social media.
Frankly, from the few clips I’ve watched, I thought Baier did great and wish more interviewers were as competent as he.
Whether or not Harris did well is another question. I’m seeing a wide array of opinions - r/conservative, while not swing voters are also not liberal voters, claim she was destroyed. I haven’t watched enough to say.
I’ve been watching politics for decades and have been on both sides of the political spectrum.
Nearly every politician is instructed to “answer the question you wish they had asked first.” Why? Because, usually, interviewers especially on Fox News are not interested in asking legitimately good questions, but rather asking “gotcha” questions to drum up attention. This was not a good faith interview by Fox by any means. Some of these questions are Loaded, which answering directly either yes/no can be framed negatively with clips later on.
That being said, if you’ve watched as many Harris interviews as I have, she has a tendency to first answer the question broadly by giving context, and then usually circles back to the question at hand.
As the other user said, a professional interviewer acting in good with will still let the politician finish their train of thought — or even finish their sentence — before circling back to the question if they felt it wasn’t answered directly enough.
All due respect but who gives a flying fuck what r/conservative thinks? The problem is they don’t think. They’re cheering for their side and would lick dogshit if the pile said Dems bad. They have a clear motive to frame everything as Donald being perfect and Harris stumbling at every turn.
There’s a difference between asking the same question again after a non-answer (which is what all interviewers should do) and interrupting someone to prevent them from answering the question.