Kamala Harris made a rather shocking announcement this week.
Her campaign and Fox News confirmed that Harris will do a sit-down interview with Bret Baier on Wednesday.
Talking Points…
- Harris in the polls
- Sitting down with Bret Baier
- Analysis
Harris has been in this race for roughly three months. When she was first gifted the nomination, she was also handed a big lead. However, much like we saw in the 2020 primary race, as people got to see more of Harris, they started to dislike her. Now her big lead is gone, and virtually every battleground state is locked in a headheat.
For Harris to win this race, she needs to sweep the key Blue Wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. If she gets those three, she sits right on 270 without needing to win any other battleground states. Currently, Harris is leading in all three states for the national average, but Trump is surging. If Harris loses any of those states, she starts to need states like Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada to make up the points.
Trump is ahead in two of the three most recent polls in Michigan. In Pennsylvania, Harris is also ahead in national averages, but Harris was behind Trump in four of the last five polls. It is the same situation in Wisconsin, with Harris having a small averages lead while training three of the last four polls. Now, I don’t want people to get too excited because, in most of those polls, Trump was only ahead by one point.
Harris needs to do something to shake things up, and the one criticism she has had is that she is not sitting down with unfriendly media. Wednesday night, that is going to change, as Harris has agreed to interview with the man I think is the best anchor in the business, Bret Baier. He will be fair, but he generally does not let people off the hook very easily, and he will push back on things he knows to be untrue.
Harris’ running mate, Governor Tim Walz, has appeared on Fox News on back-to-back Sundays, doing interviews on “Fox News Sunday.” This has been part of a big push by the Democrat Party to try to catch up on interviews, having been outpaced by the Trump campaign by more than two to one since Harris got the nomination. In each of Walz’s interviews, the host called him out for lying. His interviews, by and far, were complete disasters, which brings us to Harris.
Harris has been regularly pushing debunked narratives, which I would expect Baier to challenge her on, but Harris also has a tendency to get nasty when interrupted, so this is going to be a real showdown for her. This thing Harris is most famous for is not actually an accomplishment, but for shushing former Vice President Pence when he interrupted her, telling her that she was talking.
The one issue that I want to see if Baier brings up is the allegations against her husband, Doug Emhoff. Harris was very vocal during the #MeToo movement that “victims” needed to be believed until proven wrong, even siding against Joe Biden at a point.
Emhoff is now facing two different allegations that the media have ignored. The first came from an ex-girlfriend who claims Emhoff slapped her in the face so hard that she spun around. The second is a group allegation from former co-workers at his firm, who stated that he often undermined women and embarrassed them in public. Not a single media person has asked Harris where she stands on these incidents.
To me, there are two things apparent here. Even though Harris is still leading Trump nationally, internal polling must be painting a pretty bleak picture for Harris to agree to sit down on Fox News, especially with Bret Baier. He and Shannon Bream are two of the toughest interviewers out there right now, so this will be interesting.
Second, this is a make-or-break for Harris. If she blows this interview, her campaign is over. If she is impressive, however, she may swing some voters. I will be really interested to see how she does in polling next week after people can digest this interview. I don’t often watch these interviews in real-time, but rest assured, I will be tuned in on Wednesday night to see this one (the interview is on “Special Report” at 6:00 p.m. EDT).
