Politics
WATCH: Bret Baier Breaks Character, Humiliates Chuck Todd With Fiery Response
Fox News’ Bret Baier didn’t hold back when responding to former NBC host Chuck Todd’s recent comments questioning his journalistic integrity. During an interview at Semafor’s Trust in News: A National Summit, Semafor co-founder Ben Smith brought up Todd’s remarks, prompting Baier to set the record straight in a blunt and fiery response.
Todd, who stepped down as moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press last year, had taken a swipe at Baier, suggesting that the Fox News anchor had abandoned objective journalism in favor of cozying up to former President Donald Trump. “I thought he really actually cared about being a journalist first and wanting to walk that line. And now he just wants to have tee time with the president,” Todd had claimed.
Baier, unfazed, immediately pushed back, dismissing Todd’s criticism as baseless.
“Yeah, that’s interesting,” Baier joked. “I don’t know what promoted Chuck to do that. I have an interview to do with the UK Prime Minister today, so I don’t know what he’s doing.”
“If I have off-the-record conversations and moments with President Trump, I think that any journalist would want to get in his mind of what’s next,” Baier said. “Things are going a million miles an hour. And just to have a perspective off the record.”
WATCH:
During a recent podcast with The Bulwark’s Sam Stein, Todd subtly criticized Baier—though he didn’t explicitly mention his name. He refrained from identifying anyone specifically as he expressed his disappointment in a Fox News anchor, lamenting how they had shifted from “trying really hard to follow in Brit Hume’s footsteps” to enjoying “tee time” with Trump “like Sean Hannity.”
The remarks were part of a wide-ranging interview on The Bulwark podcast, where Stein also praised the White House’s decision to exclude the Associated Press for not using the Trump-coined term: “Gulf of America.”
“I don’t want to namecall, but I’ve given up,” Todd said during the podcast. “I’ve handed my credibility to a handful of journalists over there who’ve never reciprocated when times were tough. When times were tough for them, I went out of my way to defend a couple of them.”
LOS ANGELES – FEB 20: Chuck Todd arrives for the NBCUniversal Mid Season Press Junket on February 20, 2019 in Hollywood, CA
In Thursday’s interview, Baier later took aim at the media’s shifting narratives, pointing out how Fox News was criticized for covering concerns about former President Biden’s cognitive health—only for those concerns to later gain mainstream legitimacy.
“We were told that we were running cheap fake videos and it was all an attack,” Baier noted. “And then suddenly now there’s an effort to rewrite history.”
The Fox News anchor also called out the media’s dismissive attitude toward key stories, including the Wuhan lab leak theory and COVID-19 origins. “You go to the Wuhan lab, you go to all these things that we were a conspiracy theory and we were attacked in the media,” he continued. “And a year later, it turns out we were leading the way.”
“When we have big events, we’re [Fox News] the most watched. Breaking news, we’re the most watched. And I think that that trust is important.”
