Obfuscation was the strategy from the get-go.

It finally happened. After three months of campaigning for the presidency and mostly avoiding the kind of objective, hard-hitting interviews voters have come to expect, Kamala Harris ventured into the belly of the beast on Wednesday evening (Oct. 16) for an interview with Bret Baier of Fox News. Some say it was a riverboat gamble from a desperate candidate; others believe it was a smart decision, if only because it could shatter the narrative that she was avoiding serious policy discussions and accountability.

But Harris explained little about her policies and instead turned almost every question into a slogan or an opportunity to attack Donald Trump – sometimes both. Given that the voters are more familiar with Trump than any candidate or president in our lifetimes, trying to define or redefine him was a heavy lift. However, it did allow her to divert attention from herself and her reversal on so many radical policies that she championed during her presidential campaign in the 2020 cycle.

The interview was scheduled to air just minutes after they were done recording. Harris arrived late, which was possibly a deliberate strategy to throw Baier off his game. She seemed intent on filibustering, a strategy that proved successful at times. As Baier focused on the border for an outsized portion of the discussion, using video clips to complement his points, she constantly talked over his questions, turning virtually every query around to demonize Trump and blame him for the illegal immigration crisis and every other policy that has led to the belief by 79% of the public that the country is headed in the wrong direction. In answer to questions about the border and, more specifically, about providing taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for illegal immigrants, she repeated the phrase, “I will follow the law.” Baier was unsuccessful in pinning her down.

As in her debate with Trump, Harris cited former high-ranking Trump officials, from Vice President Mike Pence to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who declared Trump unfit to serve and dangerous. She cleverly used a refrain with Baier, “You and I both know what we’re talking about.” She bragged about her prosecution of foreign gangs when she was Attorney General of California and cried crocodile tears over Laken Riley and other Americans murdered by illegals. And she deflected from the current crisis on the border with her usual explanation that the immigration system has been broken for decades, i.e., since before Trump was elected and successfully closed the border.

While selling the idea that “I represent a new generation of leadership,” she made some minor news by declaring that “my presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency.” That will likely go down hard with Biden’s White House staff, considering it’s already involved in a contentious family feud with the Harris team. However, she did not specify a single area where she would break with the man who selected her as his running mate in 2020 after her much-ballyhooed campaign face-plant before a single vote was cast. This, after an interview with the fawning ladies of The View in which she was unable to specify where she disagrees with Biden – while campaigning on the clever slogans “A New Way Forward” and “We’re Not Going Back.” She castigated Trump over his statements about Democrats being “the enemy within” and, regarding his call for employing the National Guard to help secure the border and deport illegal immigrants, she termed it “turning the military on the American people.”

Did Kamala Move the Needle?

All in all, the left was likely pleased with the vice president’s presentation due to her sheer combativeness and her ability to withstand a contentious interview. The right may be equally displeased with Baier’s performance. He asked questions that were verbose enough to allow Harris to interrupt and did not succeed in forcing her to answer pointed queries while frequently appearing flustered and frustrated.

The closest Harris had previously come to a serious interview was on CBS’ 60 Minutes, but the network sliced and diced what she said, reorganizing it into what most people believe was a final product curated by the network to cast her in the best possible light. Her recent appearances on TV and social media had been in comfortable settings with questioners who were essentially fanboys: Howard Stern, Stephen Colbert, Charlemagne Tha God, and the left-wing ladies on The View, leading to criticism that she was speaking to the choir and failing to expand her reach. And even on arguably the most nakedly pro-Harris platform, The View, she provided fuel for Trump by her inability to describe where she would be different from the current president. Even NBC’s iconic Saturday Night Live (SNL) started mocking Harris and Biden – after limiting its ridicule to Trump in 2016 and 2020. As more than one commenter observed, when a Democrat loses SNL, it’s an ominous sign.

Thus, one got the sense that agreeing to the Fox interview was in direct response to the critics and satirists, designed to prove that she can take the heat of the hardest-hitting of interrogations – on a pro-Trump conservative platform. She did so understanding that, unlike on 60 Minutes, her sit-down on Fox would be unedited from the beginning to its truncated ending. At the same time, the Harris campaign has been openly courting anti-Trump Republicans and supporters of Trump’s primary opponent, Nikki Haley, hoping to make the case that the former president cannot be trusted with the Oval Office a second time.

One way or another, her decision to speak with Baier was the boldest move of a scrupulously cautious campaign that had managed to capitalize on the “Kamalamentum” ginned up in the immediate aftermath of her selection to replace Joe Biden. Her exposure had been limited to rallies for the Democratic faithful and vague, slogan-heavy, anti-Trump statements on social media. But as her momentum started to subside in recent weeks, her campaign evidently believed that she had to prove she could take the heat of a potentially hostile interview. But Trump and many of his supporters were still suspicious of both Fox and Baier, perhaps suffering from PTSD when the network called Arizona for Biden early on election night in 2020. As it turned out, Baier appeared unprepared for Kamala Harris’ strategy of obfuscation and did nothing to weaken her candidacy. However, with emotions running high less than three weeks from Election Day, whether it moves the needle back in Harris’ direction after a damaging week on the campaign trail is anyone’s guess.