Former President Trump is slated to sit for an extensive interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier later this month, The Hill has learned.
The taped interview, which is set to air June 19 during Baier’s “Special Report” program, will be Trump’s first with one of the network’s straight-news journalists since his 2020 election loss. He has repeatedly attacked the top-watched cable outlet recently as he makes another bid for the White House.
Trump has ridiculed Fox and its corporate ownership over its coverage of his false claims about the 2020 election for months and has accused the cable giant’s effort to boost the political ascendance of rival presidential primary candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
In his most recent attack on the network, the former president went after his own former press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, who’s now a host on Fox News.
“Kayleigh ‘Milktoast’ McEnany just gave out the wrong poll numbers on FoxNews,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post last week, referencing her commentary on DeSantis’s poll numbers. “She knew the number was corrected upwards by the group that did the poll. The RINOS & Globalists can have her. FoxNews should only use REAL Stars!!!”
Trump has nonetheless made a number of recent appearances on the network’s prime-time opinion shows with hosts who are vocally supportive of him and his political agenda.
Last week, he participated in a prerecorded town hall event from the campaign trail in Iowa with top Fox pundit and longtime personal friend Sean Hannity.
“For all the bluster, we are finalizing an interview in the next couple of weeks,” a source within the network’s news division told The Hill earlier this month. “It’s going to be fair, but it’s not going to be easy.”
Trump most recently faced tough questioning during a town hall with CNN in May, a media spectacle that was his first appearance on the channel in years at times took on the feel of one of his campaign rallies.
Trump agreeing to an interview with Baier is significant given recent reports that he is considering not participating in the first Republican primary debate, which will be hosted by and aired on Fox. Baier is widely viewed as a leading candidate to moderate the August debate.
A New York Times report last month cited a member of Trump’s inner circle who said the former president had specifically taken issue with the prospect of being questioned by Baier.
Baier, on his nightly “Special Report” program, has aired a number of segments refuting Trump’s false claims of voter fraud and fact-checking his misleading characterizations of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“Why would I have Bret Baier” question me, Trump recently asked the associate, according to The Times.
“I think the debate talk is more about him being up by 40 points than it is about Bret Baier’s questions,” the network source said of Trump’s noncommittal posture on the GOP debates.
Much of the consternation between Trump and Fox can be traced back to the network’s relatively early race call of Arizona for President Biden on election night 2020.
Internal communications from Fox’s top talent and executives from around the time of the 2020 election — which were made public as part of a recent defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems — show staffers scrambling to deal with incoming criticism from Trump and his supporters while his campaign floated unproven claims about voter fraud.
“A couple of texts in the heat of the aftermath of a crazy election does not equal the integrity of 26 years of reporting the news,” the source, who was also an integral part of the network’s election coverage, said, noting Fox never considered changing or reversing the Arizona race call on air.
The network settled with Dominion last month for $787 million and is defending itself from separate litigation with Smartmatic, another voting systems company that alleges the company defamed it by airing false claims about its software being promoted by Trump’s allies.
“We will be ready to defend this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events when it goes to trial, likely in 2025,” a spokesperson for the network said in its most recent statement about the case. “As a report prepared by our financial expert shows, Smartmatic’s damages claims are implausible, disconnected from reality, and on its face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms.”