Eugene Robinson, a regular columnist for The Washington Post, says that Bret Baier intended to make Kamala Harris look bad when he interviewed her on FOX News, but he actually allowed her to demonstrate that she’s articulate, fearless, and strong.

He writes:

One of the people Vice President Kamala Harris might want to thank in her victory speech, if she wins the election, is Fox News anchor Bret Baier. His combative interview Wednesday gave Harris the chance to display qualities — and present facts — that Donald Trump desperately wants to keep hidden from the network’s millions of viewers.

Don’t take it from me; take it from Baier himself. He said afterward that he thought Harris came to the interview seeking “a viral moment” and added: “I think she may have gotten that.”

Baier was surely referring to the exchange about Trump’s repeated threat to deploy the U.S. military against domestic critics he calls “the enemy within” — using the language of totalitarian despots. Baier presented a too-brief clip from a town hall event, aired on Fox earlier Wednesday, in which Trump denied saying any such thing. This was gaslighting: A slightly longer clip would have shown Trump railing against “the enemy from within” and naming two leading Democrats, Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, as being part of that “sick” group.

Baier obviously knew that — and Harris called him on it.

“Bret, I’m sorry, and with all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about the ‘enemy within,’ that he has repeated. … That’s not what you just showed,” Harris said forcefully. “Here’s the bottom line: 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.”

Only after having her say — and mentioning that retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, believes he is a threat to U.S. democracy and national security — did she let Baier move on to another topic.

Practically since the day Harris became the Democratic nominee, Fox News hosts and guests have blasted her for not doing more unscripted interviews. Wednesday’s half-hour encounter was a reminder that we should all be careful what we wish for.

From start to finish, Baier was more of an inquisitor than an interviewer; there was none of the deference that fellow Fox anchor Harris Faulkner had given Trump when she moderated his town hall. Baier repeatedly interrupted the vice president, trying to talk over her and posing questions seemingly cut and pasted from the list of Republican talking points.

Intentionally or not, all of this was a gift to Harris. She stood her ground, refuting the Trump campaign’s claim that she is weak and easily pushed around. She spoke fluently and cogently, putting to rest GOP claims that all she offers is word salad. She brushed off the most tendentious questions, engaged with the substantive ones, and insisted on finishing her answers whether or not Baier liked it.

When he laid an obvious trap, asking whether she thought the millions of voters who support Trump are “stupid,” she sidestepped it with ease. “Oh, God, I would never say that about the American people,” she said — before reminding Baier of some of the vicious things Trump does say about Americans who oppose him.

Harris got to present facts that Fox tries to keep its audience from learning. Viewers heard that Harris had just come from a rally attended by 100 prominent Republicans who are crossing party lines to endorse her candidacy. They heard about the host of Trump administration officials who oppose giving their former boss another term in office. They heard Harris say she does not favor “decriminalizing” undocumented border crossings, despite what some Fox hosts regularly claim.

Fox viewers heard, perhaps for the first time, that Harris has offered concrete plans to boost the economy and support middle-class families. And they learned about all the economists who say Trump’s policies, compared with hers, will make inflation much worse and add trillions of dollars to the national debt.

In a contest that polls show as margin-of-error close, will Harris’s foray into hostile territory make any difference? Who knows. It is hard for me to imagine anything Harris might say or do that would weaken the bond between Trump and the core MAGA faithful. They are accustomed to believing what their Dear Leader says over the “lies” told by their own eyes and ears.

But there are moderate Republicans and right-leaning independents who recognize Trump’s faults but have been told by Fox News that Harris is insubstantial, inarticulate and unqualified. If they watched the interview, they saw a woman whose policies they might not love but who has command of the issues, handles pressure with ease and is nobody’s pushover. Those voters saw a viable alternative to four more years of Trump and his insanity.

Some might think Baier was properly adversarial, others might think he was obnoxiously rude. Either way, the Harris campaign ought to send him flowers.