Bret Baier Says He Made ‘A Mistake’ With Trump Clip in Harris Interview

Fox News anchor Bret Baier interviews Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, aired on Oct. 16, 2024. Courtesy of Fox News

Fox News anchor Bret Baier said on Thursday that he made an error during his interview with Vice President Kamala Harris by airing the wrong clip of a comment made by her presidential opponent, former President Donald Trump.

In a contentious moment in his interview with Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, on Wednesday, Baier and the vice president sparred over Trump’s “enemy from within” remark that he made to Fox News’ Harris Faulkner earlier that day, showing a portion of the clip. Trump in the clip also said that he was not “threatening anybody,” which Harris and her campaign objected to.

“That clip was not what he has been saying about the enemy from within ... that’s not what you just showed,” Harris said to Baier after the clip was shown. “You didn’t show that, and here is the bottom line: He has repeated it multiple times, and you and I both know that, and you and I both know he has talked about turning the military on the American people.”

Trump had suggested to Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday that “radical left” individuals could cause chaos on Election Day. At one point, he called them the “enemy from within” and “sick” as he was responding to a question about whether illegal immigrants could cause problems on Nov. 5 or beyond.

On Wednesday, he made similar remarks to Faulkner in the town hall event. “I always say, we have two enemies,” Trump said. “We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within, and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous.”

In the Bartiromo interview, Trump suggested that people who cause problems in the election “should be very easily handled by, if necessary, National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military,” a comment that sparked criticism from Harris in the Baier interview.

“He’s the one who talks about an enemy within, an enemy within. Talking about the American people, suggesting he would turn the American military on the American people,” she told Baier on Wednesday.

‘I Did Make a Mistake’

On Thursday, Baier said on Fox News’ “Special Report” that he “did make a mistake” regarding clips shown in his Harris interview. He said he wanted to show both Trump’s interview with Bartiromo and his comments to Faulkner regarding the “enemy from within” remark.

“When I called for a sound bite, I was expecting a piece of ‘the enemy from within,’ from Maria Bartiromo’s interview to be tied to the piece from your town hall, Harris, where you asked the former president about ‘the enemy from within,’” he said.

“It just had the piece about the town hall. Just take a listen to what I meant to roll.” The program then also aired Trump’s comments from Bartiromo’s interview on Sunday.

After Baier’s interview with Harris, the Harris campaign wrote on social media that Fox News selectively edited the clip, while a senior Harris campaign adviser, David Plouffe, suggested that Baier had been overly confrontational in the interview.

Regarding his interview tactics, Baier told Fox News’ Mark Levin later that he “was hoping that it was really going to be this civil back-and-forth” and that “it was good for her to come on”

“I think she should do more of them,” he said.

“But I was just trying to get through the talking points and it took a while. And it was a little bit of ... interrupting and kind of getting in on the breath.”

The Epoch Times has contacted the Harris and Trump campaigns for comment but received no replies by publication time.