Fiery Harris uses testy Fox interview to claim break from Biden

WASHINGTON - A combative Kamala Harris pledged a clean break from Mr Joe Biden’s presidency on Oct 16 in a feisty interview with right-wing Fox News as she sought to reach Republican voters wary of Donald Trump.

Ms Harris clashed with interviewer Bret Baier on hot-button issues including immigration, with the Democratic nominee repeatedly asking to be allowed to complete her answers.

“May I finish responding?” Vice-President Harris at one point said to Mr Baier, regarded as a tough but fair interviewer, in an encounter broadcast from the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

Pressed on previous comments when she said she could not think of anything she would have done differently from Mr Biden, Ms Harris replied: “My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency.”

“I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences, and fresh and new ideas. I represent a new generation of leadership,” added Ms Harris, 59, who became her party’s nominee after the ageing Mr

Biden dropped out in July.

Mr Biden had said on Oct 15 that Ms Harris would “cut her own path” as president.

She also launched a blistering attack on Republican former president Trump, 78, for threatening to use the military against internal enemies.

“He is the one who tends to demean and belittle and diminish the American people. He is the one who talks about an enemy within.”

Harris’ gamble

The Democrat faced probing questioning during the interview, during which Fox News played an advert for Trump about operations for transgender prisoners, and a clip of

Trump defending his military remarks.

Her first sit-down with Fox was a gamble as she seeks to break the deadlock in a White House race that remains neck and neck with less than three weeks to go.

Fox News has played a key role in Trump’s political rise, and he earlier blasted the network over the Harris interview, accusing Mr Baier of being “very soft”.

Trump’s campaign later described it as a “train wreck”.

“Kamala was angry, defensive, and once again abdicated any responsibility for the problems Americans are facing,” Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

Trump also sat down with Fox News ahead of Ms Harris’ appearance, in a pre-recorded town hall with an all-female audience, where the conversation turned to in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), a fertility treatment that Democrats say is threatened by his policies.

Despite being on home turf, it was a challenging topic as women have been turned off by Trump’s statements on reproductive rights, and by his campaign more broadly.

He was cheered as he told his audience in the swing state of Georgia that Republicans were the party championing the procedure.

“I want to talk about IVF. I am the father of IVF, so I want to hear this question,” he said.

‘Bizarre’

Ms Harris, who has made the defence of reproductive rights a centrepiece of her election platform, called his comments “bizarre”.

Reproductive rights have been a major vulnerability for Trump since the Supreme Court, featuring three Trump-picked justices, gutted federal protections for abortion access in 2022.

Many in the anti-abortion movement also want to see IVF curbed.

Trump’s town hall in Georgia was filmed on Oct 15, the first day of early voting in the closely watched state, with voters casting a record number of 328,000 ballots.

Trump has been charged with election tampering in the state, pushing for Georgia officials to “find” enough votes to overturn Mr Biden’s narrow win there in 2020.

Ms Harris knows she has one vote in the bag for 2024. Former president Jimmy Carter cast his vote by mail on Oct 16, days after turning 100.

The Democrat was fulfilling what his family said was a wish to live long enough to back Ms Harris in the election. AFP