Vice President Kamala Harris sat down for her first formal appearance on the Fox News Network on Wednesday night, hoping to reach voters across the aisle weeks before Election Day.

The 30-minute interview with Fox chief political anchor Bret Baier often got combative, with the pair speaking over each other at times, as they tangled over topics from immigration to what Harris would do differently from President Joe Biden, to former president Donald Trump.

Immigration clash

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Baier began with the hot-button issue of immigration — a key topic for many Republican voters — asking Harris to estimate “how many illegal immigrants” the Biden administration had “released into the country” and asking Harris if she would apologize to the families of women who were killed by undocumented immigrants. He also showed a video of a woman blaming the Biden administration for her daughter’s death.

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“I’m so sorry for her loss — sincerely,” Harris said. She acknowledged that the American immigration system needed “to be fixed,” while highlighting several times that Trump had blocked a tough bipartisan border security bill, framing Trump as someone who “preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”

She also said, “I do not believe in decriminalizing border crossings, and I’ve not done that as vice president, and I will not do that as president.”

The interjections from the host were thick and fast, something Harris addressed pointedly several times. At one point, as she and Baier spoke over each other, she said, “You have to let me finish, please,” and, “I’m in the middle of responding to the point you’re raising, and I’d like to finish.”

Gender surgery for prisoners

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Baier played a Trump campaign ad that featured remarks Harris made earlier in her career expressing support for using taxpayer dollars for gender-affirming surgeries for prison inmates. He asked Harris if she still supported the policy.

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“I will follow the law, and it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed,” Harris responded.

“Under Donald Trump’s administration, these surgeries were available on a medical-necessity basis to people in the federal prison system,” she said, likening his campaign ad to “throwing … stones when you’re living in a glass house.”

She accused Trump of trying to “create a sense of fear in the voters” and said this is a “remote” issue for most Americans.

Baier noted that Trump’s aides said he’d never advocated for that prison policy, and pressed Harris on whether she would still support using public funds for the policy. Harris sidestepped, retorting that Trump would rather waste money on that ad than focus on issues affecting Americans.

What she’d do differently from Biden

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Baier pressed Harris on how her policies would differ from Biden’s, playing a clip from her recent interview on ABC’s “The View” when she said there was “not a thing that comes to mind” she would do differently than Biden did. Later in the same interview, she reiterated a promise to appoint a Republican to her Cabinet if elected.

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He noted that one of her campaign slogans said it was time to “turn the page,” and asked: “You’ve been vice president for 3½ years. What are you turning the page from?”

Harris sought to differentiate herself from Biden more firmly than she had previously, saying, “Let me be very clear, my presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency.”

She added that she had not spent the majority of her career in Washington, and would bring her own personal and professional experiences as well as “fresh and new ideas” to the White House.

Trump’s rhetoric

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Harris was impassioned as she sparred with Baier over Trump’s rhetoric, which she said had left much of the public feeling “exhausted.”

Baier asked: “Why, if he’s as bad as you say, half of this country is now supporting this person?” He then asked whether she believed his supporters were “misguided” or “stupid.”

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Harris replied that she would “never say that about the American people” and that “he’s the one who talks about an ‘enemy within’ … suggesting he would turn the American military on the American people.”

Baier then played a clip he described as Trump’s response to that claim — an earlier town hall with Fox, where Trump accused the government of “phony investigations” against him.

Harris accused Fox of cherry-picking the video. “I’m sorry and with all due respect, that clip is not what he has been saying about the ‘enemy within’ that he has repeated … That’s not what you just showed.

“You and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people. … He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him,” she said.

Biden’s mental acuity

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Baier asked Harris when she had first noticed that Biden’s “mental faculties appeared diminished” and why she had said he was capable of continuing to do the job of president before he dropped out of the race.

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She did not directly answer the question, instead saying she had “watched from the Oval Office to the Situation Room, and he has the judgment and the experience to do exactly what he has done in making very important decisions on behalf of the American people.”

“Joe Biden is not on the ballot, and Donald Trump is,” she added, flipping the conversation back to Trump and calling him “unfit” for office.

The interview remained heated even as it came to a close. As they sparred over her position on Iran, Baier said, “We’re talking over each other, I apologize,” later adding: “I hope you got to say what you wanted to say about Donald Trump. There are a lot of things that people want to learn about you and your policies.”

Harris, meanwhile, said: “I would like that we would have a conversation that is grounded in full assessment of the facts. … I think this interview is supposed to be about the choices that your viewers should be presented about this election, and the contrast is important.”