Former Fox News star Megyn Kelly took Vice President Kamala Harris to task over her treatment of onetime colleague and current network anchor Bret Baier during his interview with Joe Biden’s No. 2 on Wednesday. Kelly addressed the situation during a segment on her top-rated SiriusXM podcast the following day. Here is a partial transcript of Kelly’s monologue [see video below]:
Total failure. She did not move the needle at all. I am sure you watched last night the Kamala Harris interview with Bret Baier on Fox News. She had an opportunity to really explain to Fox News viewers how she could help them, and she didn’t. Instead, she just kept repeating her same few small-ball plans for the economy, which she has all but admitted are just a pipe dream unless the Democrats take complete control of both houses of Congress… The question is, what if you don’t? And she did no better in addressing that massive problem to all of her plans last night.
She spent the majority of her time bashing Trump. That’s what, obviously, this was about for her. She wanted to go on Fox News, into the belly of the beast, and just bash Donald Trump. It was one long game of Trump the pinata with a bunch of attacks that, in many cases, were utterly baseless.
This, Madam Vice President, was the wrong strategy. You should have called me because I worked at the place for 14 years, and I know the Fox viewers very well. And you do not win Fox viewers over by bashing Donald Trump. They love Trump or they’re at least open-minded to Trump. You win them, if they’re winnable at all, by showing the ones who aren’t huge Trump fans but are Republicans, or have voted Republican, or at least kind of Trump open-minded, you show those people that you are a better option because you can help improve their lives, that they can trust you, and that you aren’t as radical as they have been hearing every day, all day on Fox News for a year.
You didn’t do any of that… Instead, what Kamala Harris did was she took every opportunity to show the audience she and, really, Joe Biden, are the chief sufferers of Trump Derangement Syndrome. She lied over and over and over on her positions on her policies. She denied her own record. And the worst thing was – and we saw it over and over – she dodged question after question after question after question after question and then played the victim, trying to sound indignant when Bret tried to get her back on track. That was the biggest dynamic of the whole interview.
Time and time again, she failed to answer the questions on big issues – immigration, whether we should use taxpayer dollars to fund trans surgeries for prisoners and illegals, which is important but also is a stand-in for the overall issue of trans and the erasure of women. Finally, Bret asked her about Biden’s mental acuity. She failed to answer that one too. Instead, she filibustered. That was her go-to trick – either with non-responsive pablum, that was her number one choice, or sometimes on another issue entirely. Just get out of bounds. Talk about something totally unrelated.
This is a politician’s trick, and it’s not unusual to see it. But in response to everything? You’re not addressing any substance? What are you doing there? You’re trying to win voters in a new forum. Why would you say nothing? The only thing of substance she said was, ‘Trump sucks.’ And that’s the wrong strategy when dealing with Fox viewers. Honestly, it was just stupid. I don’t get it.
And then when Bret would try to redirect her back to the question asked, she acted like he was rude. He’s rude – a word her lap dog media sycophants keep repeating today. Let me tell you something about to those of you morons who think that Bret was rude in trying to get her to answer the question asked. It’s not her air. It’s Bret’s air. It’s Rupert’s [Rupert Murdoch] air. In that half-hour exchange, it is Bret Baier’s air, not yours. You don’t pay to keep the shop open. You don’t go out and deal with the advertisers. You don’t hire the staff. You don’t work with the producers. You don’t lay out the lineup. You don’t hire the talent. It’s his air. His, not yours. You being there is a gift to you. Roger [Ailes] used to tell us to never thank anybody for being on your show. He used to say, ‘Don’t say thank you for being here. It should go the other way. Thank you for having me. They should be thanking you. You’re giving them a massive audience of several million people.’
I don’t know what the ratings will be for last night, but it’ll be big. It’s your gift to them, and it’s your job to control the air when you have a guest on, to keep it interesting for your audience, to keep the car driving straight ahead and to not let it veer too far off the track. That’s your obligation. Bret is employed because Fox believes, accurately, that he will deduce what his audience wants to have asked and see discussed. It is not up to her to come hijack the entire interview with empty talking points we’ve heard 10,000 times. He did absolutely the right thing by redirecting her over and over to the question asked and, on behalf of his audience, pressing her for a real answer. He did nothing wrong. I thought he crushed it, which I posted on Twitter last night. He did a great job.
Disclaimer: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.