Harris’ one straight answer to Bret Baier that Americans just don’t believe

Vice President Kamala Harris largely demurred on tough questions in her interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier, offering a concrete and definitive answer on only one key question. Unfortunately for her, it’s the one answer Americans just don’t buy.

Harris’ ties to President Joe Biden have been a double-edged sword for her, as she simultaneously tries to distance herself from him and his unpopular administration while also asserting that she was a major player in the White House over the past four years. Ostensibly justifying her candidacy, however, was Biden’s failing mental health. When asked about Biden’s current mental health situation, she offered an unequivocal answer: Biden is fine.

But that answer raised eyebrows.

During the interview Baier pressed her on Biden’s cognitive decline, a development that became plain for all to see during his debate with former President Donald Trump and which served as the ostensive reason that top Democrats pressured him to step aside.

“You told many interviewers that Joe Biden was on his game [and] ran around circles on his staff. When did you first notice that President Biden's mental faculties appeared diminished?” Baier asked her. Harris, for her part, deflected the premise of the question and insisted that “Joe Biden is not on the ballot.” She notably, however, took great care to assert that the president is competent to remain in office.

“Joe Biden, I have watched in - from the Oval Office to the situation room, and he has the judgment and experience to do exactly what he has done in making very important decisions on behalf of the American people,” she insisted.

Baier pushed back, asking “I understand you met with him at least once a week for three and a half years. You didn't have any concerns?” 

“I think the American people have a concern about Donald Trump,” Harris retorted, “which is why the people who know him best, including leaders of our national security community, have all spoken out, even people who worked for him in the Oval Office, worked with him in the Situation Room, and have said he is unfit and dangerous and should never be President of the United States again.”

Harris’s response appears to undercut the premise for her candidacy to some extent, given that public perception of Biden’s mental faculties after the debate largely drove the pressure for him to step aside and permitted her elevation. In the period after Biden's debate meltdown, Harris insisted Biden was "sharp as a tack."

Her continued insistence that he remains sharp puts her in opposition to the overwhelming majority of the public, who have witnessed a litany of Biden’s awkward gaffes, ramblings, and forays off script.

While conservatives had long suggested that Biden suffered from mental and physical decline, the sentiment became the consensus opinion after the presidential debate, during which he often stumbled over his answers and appeared lost on stage.

A CBS News/YouGov survey released in late June, after his debate with Trump, found that 72% of registered voters did not believe Biden and the mental and cognitive health to serve as president. Only 27% believed he did.

A Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll after the debate, meanwhile, found that 66% of registered voters had doubts about Biden’s mental fitness while 74% said he had shown he was too old to be president. Fifty-four percent expressed the belief that he was “getting worse.”

In explaining his decision to step aside, Biden did not mention internal party pressure or concerns over his mental fitness, but implicitly acknowledged his age by saying “I've decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation.”

The Trump War Room distributed the clip on social media, with many respondents questioning Biden’s decision to leave the race if those close to him genuinely believe he is fit to continue in the White House.

The Baier interview came as part of a major media blitz by the Harris campaign to familiarize voters with the candidate at the 11th hour and to push back on claims she had ducked substantive interviews. The campaign had touted her willingness to appear on Fox News, a generally right-leaning outlet perceived as hostile territory. She has still not held an unscripted, open-question press conference.

Indeed, pro-Harris media celebrated the interview as a rebuttal to her critics who fretted over her penchant for softball interviews with friendly news outlets. On the right, Harris attracted considerable mockery over her evasive answers and habit of redirecting questions to permit her to attack former President Donald Trump. 

While several such clips went viral, her one attempt at a concrete answer may prove the most damaging in that it raises the question: Why isn’t Biden at the top of the ticket?