Fox News host Bret Baier summarized his Wednesday night interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, telling his colleagues that he got the sense early on that Harris would be “hard to direct without me trying to interrupt him.”
The interview, Harris' first on the right-wing network since becoming the Democratic nominee, aired on Special report after being filmed for the past hour. According to Baier, the interview was scheduled for 5 p.m., but Harris showed up 15 minutes late. This, he complained, was like “freezing the kicker” in football.
“We were supposed to start at 5 p.m. This was the time they gave us. Originally we were going to do 25 or 30 minutes. They came in and said, “Well, maybe twenty.” So it is already getting less. And then the vice president showed up around 5:15 p.m. We were moving the envelope around so we could turn it around 6pm. So that's how it started,” Baier said.
The Fox host, who would interrupt Harris' comments several times, said their first conversation — about immigration — showed she would be “tough.”
Harris takes out Bret Baier as he plays the MAGA hits
“When we started talking, I could tell it would be difficult to redirect her without trying to interrupt her,” said Baier, who compared his experience to interviewing former President Barack Obama years ago. “I did this with President Obama – at one point I just said, 'Mr. President, I know you love filibustering.” Sometimes I didn't even have the chance to redirect like that. I had many more questions.”
Baier later said that toward the end of the interview, he could see members of Harris' team signaling that his time was up.
“I'm talking like four people are waving their hands like it has to stop,” he said, adding that Harris might benefit from doing similar interviews in the future.
“Maybe she should do this more often,” he said.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
Get the Daily Beast's biggest scoops and scandals delivered straight to your inbox. Register now.
Stay informed and get unlimited access to the Daily Beast's unparalleled reporting. Subscribe now.