As has become the norm, Donald Trump unleashed an avalanche of unfounded claims and falsehoods in his interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, aired on Monday night, but Baier came prepared to rebut all the lies that Trump spouted.
In an encounter that was tense almost from its start, Baier seems to have gone in with a strategy to challenge the former president on certain topics, try to get at the truth, and refuse to be bullied or rolled by him. One post-interview headline shouted: “Fox Host BRUTALLY EXPOSES Trump during SHOCKING Interview”.
Baier came roaring out of the gate, referring to a central claim by federal prosecutors in last week’s indictment, he asked, “Why did you have this very sensitive national security defense documents, like the war plans for a strike on Iran?”
Trump responded, “So like every other president, I take things out, and in my case, I took it out pretty much in a hurry but people packed it up and we left. I had clothing in there. I had all sorts of personal items, and they are much, much stuff.”
The reporter let Trump off the hook on that one point by not asking an obvious question: why would a US President need to pack his own shoes and clothes and even more bizarrely, why would he jumble those things in with classified documents?
At one moment, when Trump started to talk about ballot box stuffing, Baier boldly told him, “You lost the 2020 election.”
“There were recounts in all of the swing states. There was not significant widespread fraud,” Baier added.
Trump angrily replied: “First of all, I won in 2020 by a lot.”
In his demeanor, Trump gave the impression that he totally believed his own assertions. When Baier bluntly told Trump, “There were investigations of widespread corruption. There was not a sense of that. There were lawsuits, 50 of them, by your lawyers, some in front of judges, judges that you appointed, that came up with no evidence.”
“You know why? They were not looking at the right things. They were counting ballots, not the authenticity of the ballots,” Trump insisted.
Against all the evidence, the former president continued to insist that “Wisconsin practically admitted that it was rigged.” Baier then noted that fewer than 475 cases of voter fraud were found in six battleground states.
During the interview, Fox News also ran clips of Trump from 2016, where he talked of the importance of protecting classified information, clips that have been making the rounds on talk and news shows and on social media. In his 2016 campaign, Trump had hammered the issue in order to castigate Hillary Clinton and press the controversy revolving around the security of her email server. Now those words are coming back to haunt the former president who, himself, has been charged with retaining hundreds of classified documents and playing fast and loose with their security.
Baier also asked Trump about a central claim of the indictment: that he had an aide move the boxes to other locations after telling his attorneys he had fully complied with the subpoena. Trump did not challenge that version of events.
Baier noted to Trump that the National Archives and Records Administration asked for the return of the documents. “No. And I gave them some,” Trump said.
“Baier responded, “And then they said they went to DOJ to subpoena you to get it.”
Trump responded, “Which they’ve never done before.”
Baier then asked, “Why not just hand them over then?”
“Because I had boxes. I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out. I don’t want to hand that over to NARA yet. And I was very busy as you have sort of seen.”
Baier added, “Yeah, but according to the indictment, you then tell this aide to move to other locations after telling your lawyers to say you’d fully complied with the subpoena when you hadn’t.”
Trump reiterated, “Before I send boxes over, I have to take all my things out. These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things.” Baier did not press this point, but one could ask, is this the responsible way to handle classified documents?
In an interview with Martha MacCallum on Monday afternoon, the Fox anchor noted that even though the magistrate judge ordered Trump not to talk about the specifics of the case with a list of potential witnesses, he talked extensively about specifics during the interview—for all the world to know.
Post-interview commentary was not kind to Trump, as some called it “incoherent and possibly, incriminating.”
