Kamala Harris's Fox News interview: Testy exchanges, Trump takedowns and distancing herself from Joe Biden

Vice President Kamala Harris endured a combative first interview with Fox News as part of the Democratic presidential candidate’s intensified push to sway undecided Republican voters while GOP rival Donald Trump appeared to adopt a similar strategy in a push to woo Latino voters in Miami.

Ms Harris followed up her combative appearance on the conservative-aligned US network with a rally at the Washington Crossing where more than 100 former Republican officeholders and officials stood by as she urged GOP voters to put “country first” and abandon Mr Trump.

The Democratic candidate made her case to Republican voters that the patriotic choice was her party in next month’s election because Mr Trump is “unstable” and “unhinged” and would eviscerate democratic norms if given a second White House term.

However, her outreach efforts to conservative viewers meant a more torrid time during her interview with Fox’s Bret Baier, where she was forced to defend immigration policy and shifting policy positions while asserting that if elected, she would not represent a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency.

Her nearly 30-minute sit down with Baier grew heated, with the two talking over each other, as he pressed her on immigration and her changing policy stances since her first run for president in 2020.

When Baier kept talking as Ms Harris tried to respond to his challenges on immigration, Ms Harris told him, “May I please finish. ... You have to let me finish please.”

Ms Harris tried repeatedly to pivot the conversation to attacking Mr Trump. But she also had plenty to say about herself.

A week after saying she couldn’t think of any move made by Mr Biden that she would have done differently, Harris asserted that “My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency.”

Ms Harris did not offer specifics, but said, “Like every new president that comes into office, I will bring my life experiences, and my professional experiences and fresh and new ideas.”

Asked to clarify her assertion that she wants to “turn the page,” though Democrats currently hold the White House, Ms Harris said she is running on “turning the page from the last decade in which we have been burdened with the kind of rhetoric coming from Donald Trump.”

On immigration, Ms Harris expressed regret over the deaths of women who were killed by people who were detained and then released after crossing into the US illegally during the Biden administration, but she criticised Mr Trump for his role in blocking a bipartisan immigration bill earlier this year that would have boosted border funding.

“I am so sorry for her loss, sincerely,” Ms Harris said after Baier played footage of the mother of Jocelyn Nungaray blaming Mr Biden and Ms Harris for her daughter’s death.

Ms Harris indicated she no longer supports decriminalising crossing the border illegally, as she did in 2019.

“That was five years ago and I am very clear that I will follow the law,” she said.

She gave the same answer about proposals to allow those in the US illegally to get driver’s licences and subsidised healthcare.

Baier challenged Ms Harris over her attestations to Mr Biden’s mental stamina after his disastrous debate with Mr Trump in June that forced his exit from the 2024 presidential race and her elevation to the top of the ticket. She again defended Mr Biden, but added, “Joe Biden is not on the ballot and Donald Trump is.”

Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Ms Harris was “angry, defensive, and once again abdicated any responsibility for the problems Americans are facing.”

She added, that if “Kamala can’t handle the pressure of an interview with Fox News — she certainly can’t handle the pressure of being president of the United States.”

Pushing back against Baier’s line of questioning at times, Ms Harris at one point told her interviewer, “I would like if we could have a conversation that is grounded in a full assessment of the facts.”

Of Mr Trump, she said, “People are exhausted with someone who professes to be a leader and who spends full time demeaning and engaging in personal grievances.”

She added, “He’s not stable.”

Ms Harris stuck to that script in her efforts to entice undecided conservative voters during her rally in the capital near where General George Washington led hundreds of troops across the Delaware River to a major victory in the Revolutionary War.

Joined by the former lawmakers and government officials for a rally in the Philadelphia suburb of Bucks County, Ms Harris said, “Anyone who tramples on our democratic values as Donald Trump has, anyone who has called for the ‘termination’ of the Constitution of the United States as Donald Trump has, must never again stand behind the seal of the president of the United States.”

With 20 days to go, Ms Harris is hoping to tear away any Republican or on-the-fence voter by warning that Mr Trump is looking to govern with “unchecked power.” She has pledged to nominate a Republican to her Cabinet and create a bipartisan council to advise her on policy matters if elected.

Ms Harris was joined for her rally by former Republican representatives Barbara Comstock of Virginia, Jim Greenwood of Pennsylvania, Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois as well as Republican officials from every administration going back to Ronald Reagan.

“No matter your party, no matter who you voted for last time, there is a place for you in this campaign,” Ms Harris said.

“The coalition we have built has room for everyone who is ready to turn the page on the chaos and instability of Donald Trump.”

Ms Harris tapped a couple, Pennsylvania farmers Bob and Kristina Lange who had previously backed Mr Trump, to introduce her at the rally. Bob twice voted for Trump and Kristina backed him in 2016.

“Never in a million years did either of us think that we’d be standing here supporting a Democrat,” Mrs Lange said. “But we’ve had enough. We’ve had enough.”

Meanwhile, Mr Trump addressed Latino voters in Miami, Florida. It’s a group that historically has leaned Democratic but that Republicans have made inroads with.

Mr Trump is walking a tightrope as he looks to woo Latino voters.

On Wednesday, he defended his call for mass deportation of immigrants who are in the US illegally, even as he nodded to a need for immigrant labour during a town hall-style event on Univision, the nation’s largest Spanish-language network.

“We want workers, and we want them to come in, but they have to come in legally, and they have to love our country,” the Republican presidential candidate said during the event, scheduled to air Wednesday evening.

Mr Trump was answering the question of Jorge Velásquez, a farm worker who said most people doing such jobs are undocumented and suggested, if they’re deported, food prices will increase.

Mr Trump then returned to his criticism of Ms Harris for being a critical player in the Biden administration that presided over an influx of migrants with criminal backgrounds.

The event featured pointed questions for Mr Trump, about his wife Melania’s support for abortion rights, noted in her new memoir, and about the January 6, 2021, siege of the US Capitol by his supporters who breached the building in an attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 election results.

“Your own vice president doesn’t want to support you now,” said Ramiro Gonzalez, of Tampa, Florida, a Republican who said he was no longer registered with the party but wanted to give Mr Trump the chance to win him back. Gonzalez was referring to former Vice President Mike Pence, who has disavowed Trump in light of January 6.

Mr Trump’s response: “Hundreds of thousands of people come to Washington. They didn’t come because of me. They came because of the election. They thought the election was a rigged election. That’s why they came.”

“That was a day of love from the standpoint of the millions,” Mr Trump told Mr Gonzalez.

Ms Harris was in Bucks County, a vote-rich stretch of suburban Philadelphia where Democrats have held a narrow advantage in recent presidential elections. Her advisers believe she needs to improve her margins in Philadelphia and surrounding suburbs to win the state’s 19 electoral votes.

Meanwhile, another former president Jimmy Carter has cast his ballot in the 2024 Election. The former Democratic president voted by mail on Wednesday for the party’s current candidate, Ms Harris, according to The Carter Center in Atlanta.

Before Carter celebrated his 100th birthday on Oct. 1 at his home in Plains, Georgia, where he’s been living in hospice care, his son Chip Carter said his father had this election very much in mind.

“He’s plugged in,” Chip Carter told The Associated Press.

“I asked him two months ago if he was trying to live to be 100, and he said, ‘No, I’m trying to live to vote for Kamala Harris.’”