Harris went on Fox and had a testy interview with Bret Baier, who is as close to an actual journalist as Faux can muster. Baier talked over her, but she pushed back. Those who were upset at Baier's aggressive and rude interviewing style are missing the point. Harris cannot go on Faux and change people's minds with policy answers. There is no magic sequence of words that will unlock Faux viewers' support for her candidacy.
The point of this interview was to engage with a hostile interviewer who would talk over her and repeat bullshit. As McLuhan would say, the medium is the message. Skeptical centrists were being fed a bunch of bullshit about Harris not sitting for tough interviews, when she had been, in fact, sitting for 60 Minutes and a town hall. Going on Faux wax not about winning those benighted viewers, it was about countering the narrative that Harris is an intellectual or rhetorical lightweight. I think they likely achieved that.
Meanwhile, simultaneously, we have Trump at the same Univision town hall format giving absolute batshit answers. When asked by a Cuban American about January 6th, he called it a "day of love." I don't think that answer is going to fly with people who fled dictatorships in the first place. Certainly the expressions on the face of the audience was damning. I don't think Trump's less extreme positions on immigration hurt him with Latin voters, but some of the more extreme rhetoric will and his usual rambling non-answers are starting to add up.
There is talk of Harris going on Joe Rogan, and I think yesterday's Faux sparring match showed that this is 100% the right thing to do. Rogan is not a combative interviewer and reducing Trump's margins among Dude Bros is another part of what she seems to be doing in taking the fight to his turf.
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