Harris Fumes After Trump Clip Played During Fox Interview, Asserts Her Presidency 'Will Not Be' Biden's | Watch

A combative Kamala Harris on Wednesday fumed after Fox News had a clip ready of her Republican rival Donald Trump after she claimed he called Americans “the enemy within.”

During an interview with a right-wing network aimed at reaching Republican voters wary of Trump, Harris pledged a clean break from Joe Biden’s presidency. Harris clashed with interviewer Fox News’ Bret Baier on hot-button issues including immigration and gender transition surgery.

“He (Trump) has repeated it many times, and you and I both know that. And you and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people. He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest,” the Democratic nominee said after Baier played a clip of Trump complaining about political persecution. “And in a democracy, the president of the United States – in the United States of America – should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he would lock people up for doing it,” she said.

Different From Biden

A key moment in the half-hour sit-down came as Harris was being pressed on comments she made last week — that Republicans have seized on — when she said she could not think of anything she would have done differently from Biden during his four years in office.

“My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” said Harris, 59, who became her party’s nominee after the aging Biden dropped out in July. Harris said she would bring “fresh and new ideas” and added: “I represent a new generation of leadership.” On Tuesday, Biden had said that Harris would “cut her own path” as president.

Harris also launched into a blistering attack on Republican former president Trump, 78, for threatening to use the military against internal enemies. “He’s the one who tends to demean and belittle and diminish the American people. He’s the one who talks about an ‘enemy within.'”

‘Very fair interview’

Responding on his Truth Social site, Trump said: “Again, congratulations to Bret Baier on a tough but very fair interview, one that clearly showed how totally incompetent Kamala is.” Harris’s first-ever sit-down with Fox was a gamble as she seeks to break the deadlock in a White House race that remains neck-and-neck with less than three weeks to go.

The Democrat faced probing questioning during the interview, with Baier also asking her to respond to Trump campaign advertisements and a clip of the Republican defending his military remarks. Harris repeatedly turned questions back to her election rival Trump. Some of the testiest exchanges came as Baier pushed Harris on the record numbers of illegal immigrants who have crossed the Mexican border under the Biden administration. Numbers have dramatically fallen in recent months.

Harris replied by saying that the Biden-Harris administration had proposed a bill for greater border security but that “Donald Trump told (Republicans) to kill it.” Harris was also quizzed on gender surgery for prisoners or illegal aliens, a conservative attack angle used in a series of the Trump campaign’s recent television ads.

“I will follow the law — and it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed,” Harris said, referring to a New York Times report Wednesday that under Trump’s presidency, prisons also offered gender-affirming care. Asked when she had first noticed that Biden’s mental acuity had “diminished” before he quit the race following a disastrous debate with Trump, Harris again turned the subject back to the Republican. “Bret, Joe Biden is not on the ballot. And Donald Trump is,” she said.

(With agency inputs)