(CNN) — Vice President Kamala Harris turned questions about her nearly four years in office into attacks on Republican rival Donald Trump’s record in a heated interview Wednesday on Fox News, her first appearance on the conservative network, as she courts disaffected Republican and independent voters.
Pressed on border crossings and violent crimes committed by undocumented immigrants during Joe Biden’s presidency, Harris repeatedly hammered Trump for opposing a bipartisan border security bill earlier this year. Asked about Biden’s mental acuity, she called Trump “unstable” and said “we should all be concerned.”
Harris also accused Fox News of whitewashing Trump’s most incendiary rhetoric, including the former president calling political rivals “the enemy within.”
“Here’s the bottom line: He 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. He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him,” a feisty Harris said after Fox News anchor Bret Baier played a clip of Trump complaining about political persecution.
“This is a democracy,” she said. “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.”
The interview came as Harris seeks to appeal to small slivers of undecided voters who have supported Republicans in the past but are uneasy with Trump. Her campaign has targeted those voters in recent days – with the vice president campaigning alongside former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, veterans of Trump’s administration and others in the party who split with the former president over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
Harris held an event earlier Wednesday in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania – a site not far from where George Washington led 2,400 Continental soldiers across the Delaware River on Christmas night 1776, a symbolic moment in the American Revolution – with more than 100 Republicans who are supporting her candidacy, including former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger and former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan.
In the Fox News interview – itself a window into how the vice president’s campaign has sought to reach right-leaning audiences – Harris also differentiated herself from President Joe Biden more clearly than she has in the past, telling Baier that she would bring new ideas and experiences to the White House.
“My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” Harris said.
“I represent a new generation of leadership,” she said. “I, for example, am someone who has not spent the majority of my career in Washington, DC. I invite ideas, whether it be from the Republicans who are supporting me who were just onstage with me minutes ago, and the business sector and others who can contribute to the decisions I make.”
Transgender care
Baier asked Harris about a Trump campaign ad that points to Harris saying she supported providing gender-affirming care to prisoners in 2019, when she was a California senator and Democratic presidential candidate.
Pressed about whether she currently supports using taxpayer dollars to fund gender-affirming care for transgender inmates, including undocumented immigrants, Harris said she would “follow the law.”
“I will follow the law, and it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed. You’re probably familiar with, now it’s a public report that under Donald Trump’s administration, these surgeries were available to on a medical necessity basis, to people in the federal prison system,” Harris said.
Harris was referencing a New York Times report that outlined the Bureau of Prisons provided gender-affirming services under the Trump administration.
“I think, frankly, that ad from the Trump campaign is a little bit of like throwing, you know, stones when you’re living in a glass house,” she said.
Brian Hughes, a Trump campaign senior adviser, told the Times: “Kamala Harris has forcefully advocated for transgender inmates to be able to get transition surgeries, President Trump never has.”
Pressed again by Baier about whether she would advocate using taxpayer dollars for “gender reassignment surgeries,” Harris again said she “would follow the law, just as I think Donald Trump would say he did.”
Fine line on immigration
Harris repeatedly pivoted to the bipartisan border security bill blocked by congressional Republicans earlier this year when asked about the Biden administration’s handling of the US-Mexico border, taking a more hawkish stance while remaining vague on some of her previously held positions.
Baier pressed Harris on the Biden administration’s decision early on to repeal Trump-era policies, in what amounted to testy exchanges between the two, at times talking over one another.
He asked how many undocumented immigrants Harris would estimate the administration has released into the United States during Biden’s presidency.
“Just a number. Do you think it’s 1 million, 3 million?” Baier asked.
“Bret, let’s just get to the point, OK? The point is that we have a broken immigration system that needs to be repaired,” Harris said.
Over multiple administrations, migrants have been released from custody after vetting when resources are stretched because border facilities are not equipped to hold people for long periods of time. That was exacerbated in recent years amid a surge of migrants crossing the border.
Baier asked Harris about Laken Riley, the 22-year-old Georgia nursing student who was killed while jogging in February. The incident has often been invoked by Republicans as an example of the administration’s handling of border security.
The suspect, Jose Antonio Ibarra, an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela, was arrested in 2022 after entering the United States illegally but was released for further processing.
“First of all, those are tragic cases. There’s no question about that. There is no question about that, and I can’t imagine the pain that the families of those victims have experienced for a loss that should not have occurred,” Harris said.
“It is also true that if a border security had actually been passed nine months ago. It would be nine months that we would have had more border agents at the border, more support for the folks who are working around the clock trying to hold it all together,” she added.
Harris maintained over the course of the interview that the immigration system is broken – a position held by Democrats and Republicans.
“I have no pride in saying that this is a perfect immigration system,” she said. “I’ve been clear — I think we all are — that it needs to be fixed.”
Asked about policy positions she held when running for president in 2019, including not excluding undocumented immigrants from benefits like health care, Harris remained vague, saying only: “I’m very clear that I will follow the law.”
Harris also said that she would not decriminalize illegal border crossings if elected.
“I do not believe in decriminalizing border crossings, and I’ve not done that as vice president,” she said. “I will not do that as president.”