Watch: Kamala Harris Scrambles, Tries to Escape Questions About Biden During Tense Interview Moment
What did the vice president know, and when did she know it?
It’s a spin on the old line from the Watergate hearings — and curiously enough, it hasn’t really been posed to Kamala Harris since President Joe Biden basically handed her the Democratic nomination in mid-July after his campaign unraveled following his obviously senile performance in a June 27 debate. She had told the country that Biden was at the top of his game. She was supposedly the last person that was in the room when he made a decision. She knew that was a lie; the same way we all found out, in an unmanaged environment, that it was a lie.
At what point, then, did she know about Joe Biden’s declining health?
The question was finally posed during Harris’ first interview with any real pushback on Wednesday evening, not coincidentally on Fox News. And, interestingly enough, Bret Baier noted that her campaign is increasingly leaning into talk that Donald Trump is too dangerously far gone to be leader of the United States, instead of the “vibes campaign” that’s brought them this far.
“You’ve called Donald Trump — he’s misguided,” Baier said. “You say now he is unstable … he’s not well. You say he’s mentally not stable.
“Let me ask you this: You told many interviewers that Joe Biden was on his game. That he ran circles around his staff. When did you first notice that president Biden’s mental faculties appeared diminished?”
There was a paused and arched eyebrows — almost as if she hadn’t expected this line of questioning despite the fact it was the most obvious line of questioning the media should have posed to her after she became the de facto nominee over the summer.
Then: “Joe Biden — I have watched him from the Oval Office to the situation room,” she said. “And he has the judgement and the experiment — and experience to do exactly what he has done in making very important decisions on behalf of the American people.”
“No concerns were raised?” Baier asked.
Note the lack of an answer. “Joe Biden is not on the ballot,” Harris said. “And Donald Trump is.”
NEW: Bret Baier asks Kamala Harris when she first noticed Joe Biden was mentally unstable after Harris tried claiming Trump was mentally unstable.
Kamala: Trump’s not stable.
Baier: When did you first notice Biden wasn’t stable?
Brutal. pic.twitter.com/3Vem87ruD5
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 16, 2024
Baier then noted that she’d repeated her support for Biden even after actor and Democratic activist and donor George Clooney wrote a damning Op-Ed in The New York Times, noting that Biden was noticeably off to those who had been close to him, including Clooney himself.
“Donald Trump is on the ballot,” Harris repeated.
Baier noted that she’d met “with him at least once a week for three-and-a-half years. You didn’t have any concerns?”
“I think the American people have a concern about Donald Trump,” she said, segueing into a bit about the all the people from his prior administration who had endorsed her and were concerned about Trump, yadda yadda yadda, you’ve heard this before.
The fuller context, just in case you missed it:
The biggest takeaway isn’t the non-answer or evasiveness — although those should still be takeaways, because this was an important question. The bigger issue is that this has been an important question since both candidates — different on one side, then — stepped off of a debate stage on the night of June 27 and it became painfully obvious to all that Joe Biden was too diminished too carry on for another four years — and was arguably too diminished to carry on well before this.
Harris hasn’t really had to answer hard questions aside from the night of the debate, when she was similarly cagey after CNN’s Anderson Cooper said it looked bad; she tried to pass it off then as being “a slow start” but insisted Biden had “a strong finish.” He did not — and the Democratic Party was, less than a month later, unburdened by his candidacy, as Kamala might say.
Since then, Harris has assiduously avoided any kind of adversarial questioning until Wednesday. And now we know why. She can’t answer the simplest question about why she’s even the candidate, about why Joe Biden isn’t on the ballot and Donald Trump is. She’s had months to prepare for the most obvious thing reporters should want to know from her, and there’s still nothing resembling a coherent response, even a fake one.
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