“You got to take responsibility for what happened in your administration,” Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris told Fox News host Bret Baier in a 27-minute interview broadcast Wednesday evening. In what already seems to be a case of prophetic last words, Harris took no responsibility for anything that has happened during the Biden-Harris administration as Baier deftly challenged her on weak spots that regime media and controlled opposition reporters have resisted exploiting since she replaced Biden to become the Democrats’ de facto candidate in July.

Harris has only given a sparing number of interviews to friendly outlets, including such leftist outliers as The View, Howard Stern, and a black radio host known as “Charlamagne tha God.” She seemed surprised and taken aback by Baier’s more penetrating questions, defensively countenancing the same smug and supercilious expression she wore during her Sept. 10 debate against former president and Republican nominee Donald J. Trump.

Her campaign adviser David Plouffe almost immediately took to X to describe Baier’s interview—which was organized and announced long in advance—as an “ambush.” Clearly this was not CBS News which—after hosting the biased vice-presidential debate that J. D. Vance, nevertheless, won—then edited an interview Harris gave to its once-respected 60 Minutes news magazine program to make the Democratic candidate look more articulate than she really is. In fact, this is the only interview Harris has given to any media outlet that is not conspicuously biased in her favor.

Harris’s evasiveness was on display from the very first question, when Baier asked her how many illegal migrants had entered the United States during her administration. All she could do was lecture Baier about the “broken immigration system,” which she claims would be a “priority” for her presidency. She moved on to empty platitudes when Baier named several real victims of recent migrant violence—all young women who were murdered following brutal assaults—but she neither expressed remorse nor accepted any degree of responsibility for these atrocities.

Baier’s point was made even without mentioning that 13,000 convicted murderers are currently at large in the United States. When pressed on whether she still believes—as she stated in the 2020 Democratic primaries—that illegal border crossings should be decriminalized, she again dodged the question, claiming that she will “follow the law.” Rather, she curiously blamed Trump for the border crisis, even though he brought it to a virtual halt during his presidency and, as Baier responsibly reminded her, it is Harris who has been in executive office for nearly four years.

Baier’s natural follow up was to ask Harris to explain Trump’s popularity, which to her camp’s reported alarm includes a significant drift toward his candidacy in recent polling. Once again, Harris’s response got lost in rote promises to “turn the page” and “chart a new way forward” from Trump, who is not in office. Indeed, any new administration would be “turning” and “charting” away from Biden, for whom Harris has served as vice president since January 2021.

On the decisive question of the economy, she appealed to “experts” who claim the country will be better off under her leadership and had no answer when confronted with the fact that 79 percent of Americans believe the country is “out of control.”

In perhaps her most fatal rhetorical flourish, Harris again insisted her recent characterizations of Trump as mentally unwell and psychologically unstable are justified—precisely the sort of ad hominem attacks that seem to have built sympathy for the Republican candidate among crucially important undecided voters. When Baier brought up the natural comparison to Biden, whom Harris assured the public was mentally astute and able up until the moment of his removal from the ticket, she stuck to her guns about Biden’s mental soundness, despite an overwhelming majority of Americans long having refused to believe any such assertion.

Instead of being “unburdened by what has been,” to quote one of Harris’s stranger turns of phrase, the Democratic candidate appeared to be quite burdened by what is and unburdened by the need to answer Baier’s questions. As her minor lead evaporates before Trump, who has spoken frankly and publicly on dozens of occasions in recent weeks, her performance did nothing to win over American voters.