Harris, mostly, prevails. Trump remains Trump.
Vice President Kamala Harris interviewed on Fox News by Bret Baier.(Fox News)
God bless you, ladies who watch daytime TV. Long pigeonholed as stay-at-home housewives, your numbers now include me, a work-at-home housewife (I’m divorced, but it’s my house, and my child is an adult, so I can call myself whatever I want). I can enjoy daytime TV aimed at the mainly suburban housewife demographic, like Donald Trump’s town hall with women voters in Cumming, Georgia, with Fox’s Harris Faulkner moderating, taped Tuesday evening but not run then—at a time a housewife is probably making dinner or putting down the bebés—but aired at 11 Wednesday morning, when we’ve made all the beds and planned the dinner menu, the kids are (best be) at school, and we can have our “me” time. It was incredibly thoughtful of Trump, a man who rarely spares us a thought, because he doesn’t seem to have a thought to spare.
The thoughts he spares us mainly revolve around fear. We’re apparently afraid, we women, and we have lots to be afraid of. Even before Trump turned to the major threat we face from immigrants, his signature issue, we heard about the threats from transgender athletes in women’s sports. (Almost every single woman in the room raised her hand when asked if she feared transgender threats.) Sex trafficking of women is up under Biden-Harris, Trump alleged (it is not). In a knotty-pine room weirdly decorated with bales of hay, as though we were departing on a grim hayride, women were reminded of our unsafety, regularly.
Of course, Trump had no way to address the one or two genuine questions he got. A single mother who said she broke her neck last year complained that her child tax credit decreased by 80 percent in the last few years. (Thanks to Republicans in the Senate and departing faux-Democrats like Joe Manchin, who thought she’s spend it on drugs.)
An unsympathetic Trump replied with his trademark word salad: “I gave you the largest tax cuts in the history of our country. Larger than the Reagan cuts. Larger. I understand exactly what you’re saying. We’re going to readjust things so that it’s fair to everybody, because it’s really not fair to everybody.… We’re going up higher, but we’re also going to readjust because you have to make some readjustments It’s unfair to some people, and we’re not going to have that.”
That made no sense at all. It went on like that. Kamala Harris, by the way, plans to expand the credit, giving $6,000 to parents of infants.
Shockingly, or not, there were Fox News plants in the audience, according to The New Republic.
To another question, Trump called himself, bizarrely, “the father of IVF.” But he had to allow that he learned what IVF was only last year, from Alabama Senator Katie Britt when she explained that her state’s Supreme Court had made it essentially illegal. How he could be the father of something he only recently heard about… well, maybe that describes Tiffany, too? Barron?
There was only one good question, from a woman who lives in Cumming but moved from Danville, California, which used to be a GOP stronghold but isn’t anymore.
“Women are entitled to do what they want to and need to do with their bodies, including their unborn,” she said. “That’s on them regardless of the circumstance. Some [abortions] are necessary to save their own lives,” she added. “Why is the government involved in women’s basic rights?”
Like most of his other remarks, Trump’s answer to this made no sense. But it was great that that question slipped in anyway. Trump praised himself for appointing the Supreme Court justices who sent the issue back to the states (where roughly 20 states now have abortion bans). He praised himself for giving women the freedom the questioner thought they should have. Harris Faulkner, of course, didn’t bother correcting him. Later she said, “Trump said ‘A woman does have the right to her body. And this is why I gave that right back to the states.’”
What are you talking about, Harris? Twenty states have taken our rights away.
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Trump doubled down on his claims about using the military to crack down on domestic enemies, once again singling out Representative Adam Schiff, head of his first impeachment trial.
“I use a guy like Adam Schiff because they made up the Russia Russia Russia hoax,” Trump said. “It took two years to solve the problem. Absolutely nothing was done wrong. [Note: That’s not true.] They’re dangerous for our country.” The Pelosis, he said, are “so sick and they’re so evil.… They’re the ones doing the threatening…. It’s called ‘weaponization of government.’”
He tried to reassure a Vietnamese immigrant, “We want as many people as possible to come in legally [Note: I don’t think Stephen Miller or Project 2025 agrees]. But we don’t want murderers, we don’t want drug traffickers.” And he implied that most immigrants fall into those categories, and boasted of his support from the Border Patrol Union and the Fraternal Order of the Police. But he did acknowledge that the economy needs “good” immigrants, which he didn’t define, while he continued to deride most immigrant groups who come here.
Six hours later, a beady-eyed Bret Baier confronted Vice President Kamala Harris in a Fox News interview as though she were the hapless wife who didn’t have dinner on the table when he got home at 6 pm. He looked hangry, and he interrupted her endlessly.
But she did fine. Running for president? “It’s not supposed to be easy,” she allowed.
Baier tried to lead her into “basket of deplorables” territory, asking about Trump’s supporters. “Are they stupid?” he asked her.
“Oh God no,” Harris exclaimed. “He’s the one who talks about an enemy within. He suggests he would turn the military against the American people.”
Baier needled Harris on immigration, sharing a clip of a mother who lost a daughter to an alleged murder by an immigrant. Apologetic in the moment, Harris brought the immigration standoff back to Trump’s blocking a tough bipartisan border bill. “Let’s talk about what is happening right now with an individual who does not want to participate in solutions,” she said.
When Baier shared Trump’s answer to a question asked by Faulkner at the earlier town hall about his hideous attacks on Democrats that soft-pedaled Trump’s remarks, Harris bristled. “Bret, with all due respect, that’s not what you just showed. He has repeated it many times. You and I both know he has talked about going after the American people. This is a democracy. In a democracy, the president of the United States should be able to handle criticism without saying he’d lock people up for doing it.”
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And she ultimately stood up to Baier for his incessant interruptions. “You have to let me finish, please,” she said at one point. “I’m in the middle of responding to the point you’re raising, and I’d like to finish.” By my count, she asked him to stop interrupting her at least four times.
Former Republicans applauded her performance. “There will be loyal Fox-News-viewing women who will walk away from Harris’ interview thinking: I don’t agree w/her much, but she’s not dumb like Trump told me, & she’s tough, despite what he’s said,” Alyssa Farah Griffin tweeted. “It matters around the edges in a tight race.”
Even Fox’s Brit Hume gave Harris credit: “She was combative and energetic, and she certainly landed some blows on Donald Trump.”
I personally wish she hadn’t had to do it, but I’m proud as hell she did well.
Joan WalshTwitterJoan Walsh, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, is a coproducer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show and the author of What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America. Her new book (with Nick Hanauer and Donald Cohen) is Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power and Wealth In America.