According to Bret Baier, the Harris team would allow a 25 interview of Vice President Kamala. It turned out to be only 20 minutes, and it started late such that the turnaround presented a logistical problem of airing a live to tape interview unedited.
Baier: So we were waiting at 4:55. At 5:17 the vice president walked out. It did feel like icing the kicker or trying to. pic.twitter.com/QiKhNsJ9kc
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 17, 2024
How it felt to Baier is largely irrelevant. That it remained his job to get the best interview possible under the circumstances, even if difficult, is what a journalist does. But when the interview is unfriendly, even hostile, there are tricks that can be played to make the interview uninformative, such as dodging the questions and instead spewing canned answers that fail to respond to the questions posed.
But there is another trick available, known as the “filibuster.”
Still, in his eagerness to prevent a filibuster, Mr. Baier’s follow-up questions sometimes resembled rebuttals. Afterward, on a political roundtable with Fox commentators, Mr. Baier sounded a touch defensive. “I tried to redirect numerous times without interrupting too much, but at some point, you kind of have to redirect to get back in the game,” he said.
The problem is fairly obvious if you think about it. There is only so much time available to conduct an interview, whether because of the airtime allotted to the interview or the length of time the interviewee is willing to sit. If a question is asked and the interviewee lapsed into a lengthy, nonresponsive soliloquy that will kill the time available, the interviewee has essentially beaten the question by not responding and seizing control of the interview by using up the available time such that they can claim they did the interview without ever being held to account for dodging the questions. The interviewee may not have won over any new hearts or minds, but managed to complete the interview unscathed. To the intervieree and her team, that’s a win.
Her aides declared themselves pleased with the results.
“We feel like we definitely achieved what we set out to achieve, in the sense that she was able to reach an audience that has probably been not exposed to the arguments she’s been making on the trail,” Brian Fallon, Ms. Harris’s campaign communications director, told reporters on Air Force Two. “She also got to show her toughness in standing tall against a hostile interviewer.”
What’s an interviewer to do? There are only two options. The first is to wait out the lengthy, time-killing non-response, which means the question never gets answered and the limited time is used up without challenge. The second option is to interrupt. The problem with interruption is that it’s rude for anyone to do, and particularly rude when it’s a man interrupting a woman as reflective of sexism.
Frequently, however, Mr. Baier did not give viewers that chance. Instead, looking frustrated, he cut off several of Ms. Harris’s answers after a few seconds. His first interruption came within the first half-minute of their exchange.
“May I please finish responding?” Ms. Harris asked at one point. “I’m in the middle of responding to the point you’re making, and I’d like to finish.”
Saying words after being asked a question is only “responding” if it’s responsive. Otherwise, it’s just saying words. It doesn’t take long to recognize that someone is launching into a lengthy (because it’s been said and done before) diatribe that fails to respond to the question posed.
Still, in his eagerness to prevent a filibuster, Mr. Baier’s follow-up questions sometimes resembled rebuttals. Afterward, on a political roundtable with Fox commentators, Mr. Baier sounded a touch defensive. “I tried to redirect numerous times without interrupting too much, but at some point, you kind of have to redirect to get back in the game,” he said.
Whether Baier’s questions were fair or accurate is another question. There is nothing wrong with an interviewee being asked a question grounded in a false premise challenging the question. Indeed, begging the question has become commonplace given that right and left are living in factually different universes. But if one deems to answer the question posed by filibustering, there is little an interviewer can do about it other than suffer the spiel or interrupt the filibuster.
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I felt Baier’s pain, having yesterday sought to cross a drunk driving breath analyst who had her own irrelevant canned responses to relevant questions. But the rules in that court trial gave me the tools to get my answers. Baier’s task was much more challenging. At times he tried both approaches, but time was called. I thought he expressed his frustration in his interruptions. Debate? Maybe. Non-interview? Definitely. Maybe one answer in the allotted time was new. Not much, beyond the candidate’s filibustered speeches and prepared call-outs, for an undecided voter to digest and weigh. Sadly.
To be undecided at this point is to be so low-information that no information will ever break through. The information is there, on all sides. The willfully ignorant will never see it.
You’re probably not wrong. Those who wish to vote for neither will either stay home or flip a damn coin.
The question i have is what was Harris’ purpose in doing the interview? If it was to show she could walk into the lion’s den and emerge unscathed, then she accomplished her goal. If it was to win over new voters, then it failed.
Your comment about a lion’s den reminded me about a great Ed Koch quote that may apply here. 45ish years ago Koch refused to pose for a photo with a tiger, saying “The mayor is not a coward but the mayor is also not a schmuck.” And just as you could not force Koch into the tiger’s cage, you can’t force Harris into the lion’s den, at least not outside of her terms. There is no subpoena to get KH into the studio, and there are no rules or tools to get answers. (“compulsory process for obtaining”, I think you call it). Assuming that she is neither a coward nor a schmuck, she came to Fox with an agenda, and answering the questions as posed was not on it.
MSNBC last night: screw it, let’s just run against Bret Baier instead.
Those who say Harris is an idiot aren’t paying attention. You don’t end up running for president by being an idiot. She has an unusual comedy style, but she displayed amazing competence last night. Poor Bret Baier was totally flummoxed. He is a marginally intelligent drone, and he’s very good at reading lists of tough questions, but he is helpless when confronted with a nimble opponent who is determined to time out the interview without answering any questions. Harris responded to every question with a long soliloquy of irrelevant talking points. When he attempted to interrupt she just talked over him, and he didn’t know what to do. This was a classic mismatch of an expert politician with an inept interviewer, which is exactly what the Harris campaign wanted. They get to say that she faced an adversarial interview, and she emerged unscathed. You won’t see her on Tucker’s show.
Comedy style? You ok? Sorry I’m being a jerk but the comedy style comment has me completely baffled
All of my comments hinge on my theory that politics is merely a TV show, and that pulling a voting lever has no effect at all on the actions of government. The only purpose of the politician (especially the president, is to entertain and distract us.
There was a time when the presidency was a dramatic role. People like Lincoln and FDR portrayed serious people who talked about serious issues. That time has passed. The presidency is now a comedic role. Trump, the greatest entertainer of our generation, plays a brash, wisecracking hero similar to Indiana Jones. Biden played a bumbling clown, combining Chauncey Gardner with the Three Stooges. Harris has a new and very unusual comedy style that leaves older people baffled but the younger set is intrigued. Harris is the Lenny Bruce of our time; building on Trump’s redefinition of what it means to be a politician with an even more radical style.
>You don’t end up running for president by being an idiot
Fair enough statement.
>but she displayed amazing competence last night
Intelligence and competence are not the same thing. I have met people who have a room temperature IQ who are fully competent in their chosen fields of endeavor, and I have met some incredibly intelligent people who couldn’t figure out how to pour piss out of a boot.
Being able to ignore the questions being asked of you and regurgitate prepared talking points instead is not a display of competence, it is something that is easily done by any, as you put it, marginally intelligent drone. The only thing VP Harris displayed last night is an a continued unwillingness to run on a platform beyond, “I am not Darth Cheeto.”