Kamala Harris Goes Into the Lion's Den, Whose Polling Shows Harris Winning the Electoral College

Vice President Kamala Harris, aiming to win over Republican women voters, was interviewed last night by Fox News in what ultimately resembled more of a debate than a Q&A with anchor Bret Baier. The biggest takeaway from the night is that she not only held her own in a hostile interview, she may have actually accomplished what she wanted to, which was win over some new voters.

For nearly half an hour, Baier pressed Harris on topics like immigration and gender-affirming care, basically pushing the talking points of the Trump campaign. Harris, meanwhile, pushed back repeatedly against interruptions, asserting her right to finish her responses. If anything, that’s what will be remembered most: Baier repeatedly cutting her off and Harris refusing to be spoken over.

It was also incredibly disingenuous for Fox News to show this clip instead of this clip when asking her about Trump threatening “the enemy within.”

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The interview highlighted how much of a bubble Fox News viewers are in, how inseparable Fox News is from the Trump campaign, and how Baier was clearly more worried about alienating his audience (and Trump) than engaging in a fair-and-balanced interview. He was not asking questions. He was debating Harris. But Harris did not storm off, call the questions unfair, play the victim, or call Baier “dumb, nasty, or unfair,” which, more than anything, may have shown the contrast between her and Trump.

It is also telling that Fox News immediately put on Donald Jr., Eric, and Stephen Miller to offer harsh rebuttals of Harris rather than let anything that Harris said stand. The network was clearly most concerned with protecting its own ass.

After the debate interview, I did go on social media to see how it was being received, and on Threads, which feels like a haven for Harris, users were unanimous in their praise. Twitter/X, which is owned by a man who has donated $75 million to the Trump campaign and reoriented an entire social media platform around the former President, the response from blue checks was mostly negative. It was telling that most of the negative responses I read surrounded speculation that Harris’s people had ended the interview early and not about Harris’s performance itself.

Meanwhile, the one thing about the New York Times in its sanewashing era is that if they thought Harris performed well, at least I could trust that.

For a Democratic presidential candidate, appearing on Fox News is about as close as going into the lion’s den as it gets. On Wednesday, the lion was Mr. Baier, who repeatedly interrupted the vice president and tried to talk over her.

But Ms. Harris — giving her first interview on Fox News in an attempt to reach millions of voters, especially conservative-leaning women, who have probably not heard much of her message — largely steered the conversation in her preferred direction.

That’s practically glowing praise for the Times.

Will the interview actually matter? I don’t know, but it certainly has to quiet the people who have been criticizing Harris for not doing adversarial interviews. Trump, meanwhile, melts down in an environment that should have been friendly.

Meanwhile, I know we don’t do polls because they’re all within the margin of error, they’re unreliable, yadda yadda yadda, but Fox News did release a poll yesterday that showed Trump up by +2 nationally but losing in the swing states, meaning that — according to their poll — he’d win the popular vote but lose the Electoral College. That would be hilarious, and he would lose his fucking mind.

Do beware, as well, that the GOP is flooding the zone with Republican-leaning polls, which anyone’s ability to read anything into the polls even more meaningless. Also, for those of us who obsess over polls even though we know better, the Times has a frustrating piece about the accuracy of polls this year. Basically, polls underestimated Trump’s support in 2016 and 2020, but the pollsters feel like they’ve made the appropriate corrections. The question is: Did they, or could they have even overcorrected?

The reality is, we’re not gonna know shit until election night. That’s in 18 days.

One final note: Rachel Maddow is Maddowing again, overselling a “bombshell” report that the Trump campaign was trying to pay off Stormy Daniels ahead of this election. It’s not not true, but it’s also the kind of story that only gains traction in Rachel Maddow land. Basically, the Trump campaign offered to knock $15-$30K off the $650K she owes Trump in legal fees after losing her case against him, if she would sign an NDA and stop talking about their sexual relationship. But there are no new details about that sexual relationship to keep quiet. It was just basic lawyering, even if the optics were not great.