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Fox News host Bret Baier claimed Kamala Harris was 15 minutes late to their fiery sit-down interview as he delivered his verdict on the vice president’s performance.
The veteran presenter spoke to colleague Dana Perino to give his post-mortem on the 27-minute interview after it wrapped on Wednesday night, saying it had been “tough to redirect” the Democratic candidate without interrupting her.
Baier compared Harris being late to the interview to when the kicker in football calls a time-out before they go to kick the field goal.
“They’re icing the kicker,” he said. “So, we were supposed to start at 5pm. This was the time they gave us. Originally, we were going to do 25 or 30 minutes. They came in and said, ‘Well, maybe 20.’ So, it’s already getting whittled down.
“And then the vice president showed up at about 5.15pm,” he said, adding that it was a tight turnaround because the show airs at 6pm.
Baier has been criticized online for repeatedly interrupting and talking over the vice president during the interview, where the pair had several heated exchanges.
Addressing his interruptions, he told Perino: “I could tell when we started talking that she was going to be tough to redirect without me trying to interrupt.
“I did this with President Obama–at one point I just said, ‘Mr President, I know you like to filibuster.’ I just didn’t even have the chance, sometimes, to redirect in those ways. I had a lot of other questions.”
When his time was up, he said Harris’s campaign staff started waving their hands signaling the interview was over. “I’m talking, like, four people waving their hands like it’s got to stop,” he said.
However, Perino conceded: “At times, especially when she was trying to go after Donald Trump, she was fairly effective in that, to try to get her point of view across.”
In another interview with conservative commentator Mark Levin, Baier said he was “frustrated” because he couldn’t ask all the questions he wanted in the allotted time.
“I had so much stuff to get to,” he said. “I was hoping it was going to be this civil back-and-forth, but it was good for her to come on and I think she should do more of them, but I was just trying to get through the talking points and it took a while.”
The Independent has contacted the Harris campaign for comment.
Trump weighed in on the interview, accusing Harris of having an “irredeemable case of Trump derangement syndrome,” and – despite concerns over his own cognitive faculties – suggested the vice president should take a cognitive test.
Posting on Truth Social, Trump said: “She is barely able to talk about any subject other than the man who had the best economy ever, the strongest border in history, and who just got the UNANIMOUS ENDORSEMENT OF THE U.S. Border Patrol, ME!”
He added: “She is also the WORST Vice President in history, but hopefully will soon be GONE. Again, congratulations to Bret Baier on a tough but very fair interview, one that clearly showed how totally incompetent Kamala is. For the good of our Nation, her inferior Cognitive ability must be tested at once!”
Meanwhile, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNN it was an “impressive” performance from Harris. “She was tough, smart, focused, disciplined, the same qualities that made her a very effective prosecutor, and I think are going to make her a very effective president,” he said.
Former GOP representative Adam Kinzinger also praised her for “going into the lion’s den”.
“She went into the lion’s den and took them on and stood tall. Fox tried their bs [sic] gotchas in their rightwing reality, and she turned everything deftly back to Trump and held him accountable in his own safe space,” he said.
Read More: Fox News’s Bret Baier says Harris was late as he gives verdict on ‘tough’ interview
