Harris targets Trump’s fitness for top job in Fox grilling

The Democrat nominee also clashed with conservative anchor Bret Baier over immigration and gender transition surgery.

Kamala Harris and Bret Baier repeatedly spoke over each other.

Kamala Harris has used the most hostile interview of her campaign on Fox News to argue that Donald Trump is unfit to serve as she was pushed onto the backfoot over border security and accused the former president of sabotaging efforts to “fix the problem.”

She also promised to offer a new direction if she emerged victorious following the November 5 election, declaring that “my presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency” and arguing that she would represent a “new generation.”

While last week Ms Harris could not identify a single issue that she would have handled differently from Mr Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee now said she was charting a new course for small businesses and housing affordability.

In a fiery interview with Bret Baier on the conservative Fox News channel, she was immediately pressed to provide an estimate of how many illegal immigrants had been released into the US over the last 3 ½ years.

Baier also pushed Ms Harris over whether she would apologise to the families of victims who had been killed by illegal migrants released into the community.

Ms Harris, who said the deaths were tragic, argued that America had a “broken immigration system that needs to be repaired” and that it would be a priority issue for her before she went on to accuse Mr Trump of sabotaging attempts to strengthen the border “because he’d prefer to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”

“This is rightly a discussion that the American people want to have. And what they want are solutions,” she said. “I am the only person who is running for president who has prosecuted transnational criminal organisations ... I have spent a significant part of my career going after people who present a threat to the safety of the American people.”

Ms Harris, who was interrupted less than 10 seconds into her first answer, later sought to push back against arguments from the Trump campaign that she backed “taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners” by arguing those same arrangements were also in place during Mr Trump’s years as president.

“I will follow the law,” she said. “And it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed ... Under Donald Trump’s administration these surgeries were available too, on a medical necessity basis, to people in the federal prison system.”

Asked when she first noticed that Mr Biden’s mental faculties appeared diminished, Ms Harris said that he still retained the “judgment and experience” to make “very important decisions on behalf of the American people.”

“Joe Biden is not on the ballot,” she said. “And Donald Trump is ... I think the American people have concerns about Donald Trump.”

Ms Harris’ strongest attack was reserved for Mr Trump’s weekend comments when, in a Fox News interview with Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures, he said that “I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within.”

“We have some very bad people. We have some sick people. Radical left lunatics. And I think it should be very easily handled, if necessary, by National Guard or if really necessary by the military,” Mr Trump said. “The enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries.’

Ms Harris told Baier at the end of the interview that “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,” she said

“This is a democracy. 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. And this is what is at stake.”