Bret Baier accused Vice President Kamala Harris and her campaign team of pre-interview delay tactics that he likened to “icing the kicker” ― the football practice of calling timeout to psych out an opposing kicker about to attempt an important field goal. (Watch the video below.)
“We were supposed to start at 5 p.m.,” the Fox News anchor told colleagues Wednesday in a postmortem of his chat with the Democratic presidential nominee.
“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 was already getting whittled down. And then the vice president showed up about 5:15. We were pushing the envelope to be able to turn it around for the top of the 6 o’clock. So that’s how it started.”
“I could tell when we started talking that she was going to be tough to redirect without me trying to interrupt,” he continued. “I just didn’t even have the chance to, sometimes, redirect in those ways. I had a lot of other questions.”
Colleague Dana Perino said the Democratic nominee should have continued the conversation in an effort to win the news cycle.
“I’m talking, like, four people waving their hands like ‘it’s got to stop,’” Baier said of the pressure to end the interview. “I had to dismount there at the end.”
Still, Baier hinted that the vice president did the right thing by appearing on the conservative network for their chat. “She maybe should do more of these,” he said.
The anchor elaborated while speaking with Fox News’ Mark Levin.
“I was hoping that it was really going to be this civil back-and-forth,” he said. “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. And it was a little bit of, you know, interrupting and kind of getting in on the breath.”
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Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, complimented Baier on a “Great” interview that was “tough but very fair.” However, the host was criticized by observers for talking over the vice president during their tense encounter, and for using a misleading video snippet to sanitize some of Trump’s controversial comments.
Harris similarly accused Baier of interrupting her and whitewashing Trump’s recent “enemy from within” remarks about “radical-left lunatics.” (Trump said reactions to his terminology were exaggerations.)
“Despite Baier’s best efforts to draw some blood, Harris held her own,” HuffPost’s Igor Bobic reported.
HuffPost has reached out to Harris’ team for comment.
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