Page 71 of 107 Days

Of course Bret Baier wanted to talk about the trans ad.

He wanted to talk, period. Especially while I was talking. He interrupted me thirty-eight times in the twenty-seven-minute interview.

I certainly wasn’t expecting kid-glove treatment from Fox News. More like boxing gloves.

Baier might as well have been interviewing himself. He wouldn’t let me finish a sentence before interjecting. We spent ten minutes of the twenty-seven talking over each other on immigration before moving to the transgender subject and then on to Joe Biden’s age. It was the MAGA playlist.

But he made one major blunder. When I criticized Trump for his threats to use the military on US citizens and lock up his political opponents, calling the American people “the enemy within,” Baier then tried to refute it with a clip from a town hall Fox had conducted with Trump earlier that day.

The clip showed Trump saying, “I’m not threatening anybody. ”

I’d watched that town hall on the plane on the way to the interview.

I immediately recognized that Baier had cherry-picked the most innocuous part of the quote.

Because Trump had also said that the biggest threat to America isn’t China or Russia.

“It is the enemy from within and they’re very dangerous.

They’re Marxists and communists and fascists and they’re sick…

the Pelosis, these people—they’re so sick and they’re so evil. ”

I challenged Baier on his deception and quoted the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, who said Donald Trump is “the most dangerous person to this country.” I was pretty sure it would be the first time many in the Fox audience would have heard that.

I had been advised, and I believed, that of all the Fox anchors, Baier was the most professional and the most reasonable. That he would be tough but fair. During the interview I had called him “a serious journalist.” But I felt that the stunt with the video clip was the work of a propagandist.

I have a saying: Disappointment is a function of unreasonable expectations. At that point I was deeply disappointed and realized my expectations had been quite unrealistic.

There had been no small talk when I arrived for that interview and there was none when I left. I took off my mic, said thank you to his crew, and walked away.