Bret Baier on golfing with Trump, his 2028 predictions, and making the case for civility

20:21Actually, that was your spook. That wasn't. Forget it. Never mind. Take that one. Take it. Yeah, exactly. Brett, how long have you been at Fox in total? 28 years. 28 years. And you started as a reporter? The Atlanta Bureau. I was the southeast in South America. Latin America, bouncing around. I'd hire freelance crews at the beginning, and we built up a bureau, but I was covering everything, hurricanes, tornadoes, Ellie and Gonzalez in Cuba, local political stories down south. And then 9-11 happened, and I was called to back up in New York. Second plane hit, they told us to drive from Atlanta. Third plane hit, They rerouted us to the Pentagon, and I never left.

21:09I started doing live shots outside the burning Pentagon that night for Fox affiliates around the country, and then about a week later became the Pentagon correspondent. And at what point did you kind of get onto the radar of higher-ups at the network, of network ownership? At what point did you get onto the Murdoch's radar as someone who was like a rising star? Well, it was Roger Ailes who hired me. And I guess I started anchoring. I took every opportunity to anchor whenever somebody was off. So I took, if Geraldo Rivera was off on the weekend in New York, I would go out to New York and take his show.

21:48Or somebody was off on Fox and Friends on the weekend, and I would go up and do that. And then eventually, Brit Hume cut his time to Monday through Thursday, and he would appear on Fox News Sunday. So Fridays, I would anchor a special report as a kind of a fill-in, as I was chief White House correspondent at the time. So I guess that's when it started, you know, probably a few years before 2009. As someone who's been there and has a lot of institutional knowledge, do you feel like you kind of have a say in the direction of the network? Yeah. So I'm the executive editor of special report. So what happens in between six and seven, I'm responsible for.

22:28and I make the decisions. I mean, it's a team, but I am directly involved in the editorial of what the show covers, what we lead with, all of that. As far as the broader network, each show has its own kind of equation. I put into the system if something newsworthy is worth noting from a certain point of view or sources that I have from the Pentagon or the White House or Capitol Hill. And so I advise and consent throughout the day if I get news, but I'm not steering anybody else's show. I'm responsible with horse blinders on my show. Of course. And you were featured at the Upfronts, the big presentation for advertisers that's put on by Fox, by Fox Corp.

23:16There's a lot of interest, obviously, these days in the executive and ownership class of media companies. Everybody's interested in what's going on with David Ellison and Zasloff, and they made a whole show about this a few years ago, of course, and that was Succession. And what's your relationship like with the Murdochs? What's your relationship like with Fox Corps? Are they watching every night as well, just like Mitch McConnell and Trump? I think so. I think Rupert Murdoch, Mr. Murdoch, watches religiously. He calls it the news. So that's a good thing. If he's watching the news, hopefully he's watching me, and I think he is.

23:52So I have a great relationship with the Murdochs. Lachlan has been great to work for. I don't talk to them a lot. It's probably once a quarter, maybe a little bit, you know, a couple more times. See them in New York every now and then. But there's no top-down call or something that says, here's what we're going to do. It's very much bottom-up. Well, we have a lot more that we want to get to with Brett Baer, but we have to take a short break. So we'll be right back with more after this.

24:29Max:In this week's branded segment from Think with Google, I talked with Google's VP of Marketing, Josh Spanier, about an interesting case study from the Salvation Army. AI still feels theoretical to many people. What's your favorite recent example of AI in action? So I love thrift shopping, Ben. I love going to the Salvation Army. I love the Salvation Army. I actually saw a case study from the Salvation Army pretty recently, which I thought was an incredibly powerful use of AI. They built a whole marketing program around FOMO, fear of missing out, a whole marketing program around marketing products that had already sold and you could no longer buy.

25:04Max:Now, Salvation Army is kind of an interesting business because every product is one of one. They don't have more stock in the back. It's just a unique item. Working with that agency, they were able to turn that insight into a campaign where they would advertise a product that had sold and was no longer available to reinforce the point that if you don't get down to the Salvation Army, you're going to miss out on the next treasure waiting there for you. And so how did they use AI to do that? So they used Google Gemini, they used Nano Banana, our image generation technology, and DemandGen, one of our performance products.

25:36Max:And they actually connected to the Salvation Army website. And every time a product was sold from one of the local stores, they instantly generated a beautiful Vogue-esque digital ad, geo-targeted near to the individual store where that item had sold, saying, hey, this item's gone, get down here. It was a really clever use of technology, a really clever use of AI, created some urgency and relevancy. It did two great things. It drove a lot more traffic into the store. It worked really, really well. And it made the Salvation Army even cooler than it already is. FOMO for the Salvation Army. Very fun.

26:11Max:Where can people go for more? Head on over to thinkwithgoogle.com. There's a whole case study written by their agency and the Salvation Army going into how they did this work. It's a really good read. If you search FOMO into footfall or FOMO into foot traffic, you'll find the article. It's really good at thinkwithgoogle.com.

26:40Max:Your latest book, The Case for America. Which is very like, it's a very like deliberately bipartisan kind of, you have a Doug Brinkley blurb. And there was this quote that stuck with me that you have in there from Tim Shriver, who's a Kennedy. Your interview with him made a big impression on you and your viewers and his statement that vitriol is really not who we are as Americans. You talked to him about his dignity index, which is a way of measuring how we talk to one another when we disagree and the importance of treating one another with dignity. Do you think President Trump treats people he disagrees with appropriate dignity?

27:10Definitely not all the time. And I think he is, you know, it takes leadership to get to that point that he's talking about. He chooses to do it differently. And he comes from a New York real estate developer swing. If you're punched at, punch back harder. And, you know, I think that there is this sense of hunger in the country as you talk to people that we should be able to listen to each other, disagree. Dissent is who we are. or baked into the cake, but not dehumanize people. And that's part of our problem. And, you know, the president's cited many times as far as, you know, some of those true socials or what he says about someone.

27:58And it doesn't sit well, even with some of his supporters. But most importantly, there is a sense that, you know, maybe there's a better way to talk about and to people. And that's what Schreiber's talking about. Republicans and Democrats, you know, it was great. Arthur Brooks in this book talked about he does political focus groups and he puts MAGA and social Democrats, you know, liberals into a room and says, we're going to talk about politics. And they all get their backup ready to go and fight. And then he says, but first we're going to talk about our family for 10, 15 minutes. And everybody's talking about your teenager stayed out that late or the kid fell off the swing set.

28:38And it changes the dynamic. There's a shared love that people then can listen to one another. And more of that, I think, needs to happen. And I'm trying to do it one common ground segment at a time. But yeah, the president, it takes leadership to do that. And sometimes he chooses not to do what Tim Schreiber is talking about.

28:59Max:I mean, there's a lot on Fox, a lot across cable that is, I think, not aspiring to treat people that disagree with the utmost dignity. Do you ever talk to your colleagues about that? Do you ever try to push them to listen to Tim Shriver more? I wrote the book. Was the book addressed to Laura Ingram? No, it wasn't addressed to anybody in particular. They do their own thing. They're an opinion page. I'm a news page. We work under the same umbrella. They do what they do really well, but we do it totally differently. And again, I'm wearing my horse blinders from six to seven. Brett, you are one of the preeminent observers of Washington.

29:38So it would be negligent of us not to ask to get some fun predictions out of you. We're already halfway through 2026. So within the next few months, the 2028 election will officially be in full swing. It's already kind of going on in many ways. Who do you think is going to be the Republican nominee in 2028?

29:59Max:Yeah, and specifically, where are you going to put your poker? Where would you put your poker chips? Yeah, we got to put poker chips. You're going to do it to me? I think that's fair. Who dare you? Candidate casino to me. Look, I think it's fascinating the fact that it's not definitively J.D. Vance, the vice president, sitting vice president. I think it's fascinating. And where do I put the chips? I don't know. Maybe it's a 60-40 J.D. over Marco Rubio. If the Democrats win the House and the Senate, it is going to be a super bumpy ride for two years of hearings and testimonies and subpoenas. And so maybe in that environment, it's neither of them.

30:42And it's somebody outside of the Trump administration. So I would have to put like 55 on J.D. Vance, 35 on Marco Rubio, and 10 for the field if it's not the Trump administration.

30:59Max:Anybody stand out in that field? I've been thinking about that. I'm not sure. I don't know yet. Everybody talks about Glenn Youngkin, but he's out of office now. People talk about Dave McCormick from Pennsylvania. They talk about other governors that maybe could get in. But I think it's probably J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio that it comes down to. Who do you think are the strongest Democratic contenders? It's hard for me to discount Gavin Newsom. I think that the story he tells is not a great one from California, but he is a flashy guy who gets a lot of attention in Democratic circles. He can sometimes touch the far left and sometimes kind of go towards the middle.

31:43So he might be somebody that rises to the top. Obviously, Kamala Harris leads in all the polls, but every Democrat that I talk to doesn't seem to think that she's going to rise to be the nominee this time. Gavin, we've talked to him a number of times. He's also equally obsessed with the media. You know, he texts with some of your colleagues. Do you ever hear from him? He's come on your show, I believe, as well, right? Yeah, a number, a couple of times. And I'm trying to get him back on. And I exchange, I talk to him or text him. And I think he's formidable and kind of obviously laying out a blueprint of how he's going to do this.

32:21So I think, yeah, he's a figure. I think there are others, though, that other governors, there are other people that we are probably going to be surprised that there is going to be some Donald Trump figure on the left, not like Donald Trump, because we'll never see a unique politician, I don't think, in our lifetime that fits that mold exactly. But somebody that we're not thinking of that does their own escalator ride down on the left side. I was reading Rob Flaherty, the former deputy director of Kamala Harris's Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris's campaign. He wrote a response last week in the bulwark to the DNC autopsy.

33:00He wrote his own autopsy, essentially, and said what he had told the Democratic National Committee about what went wrong in the 2024 election. And he said one of the biggest moments of the campaign, of Kamala Harris's campaign, was when she went on your show. And that coincided with a spike in donations and the viewership on it was pretty significant. Have you seen more interest among Democrats and potential contenders in wanting to come on your show since the 2024 election? Because it seems like there's been a big shift from particular 2020 when there were candidates like Elizabeth Warren who were saying no Democrats should go on Fox News.

33:36Yeah. By the way, Elizabeth Warren went on Fox News that year to sell a piece of legislation. But besides that, I have seen that. And I think it's not only about eyeballs, but it's also about coverage of coverage. And I think that they realized the bang for the buck. That interview with Kamala Harris, I think, got 16 million viewers. and I heard the same thing from Kamala Harris folks that it was they were really happy with the interview I didn't know how happy they should be about it but they seemed very pleased with it and that she wanted that whole back and forth and that's what they were going for but Trump people at the same time thought that it was a different dynamic looking at the same interview but I have a lot of Democrats who come on.

34:26The common ground thing has really taken off. It's easy to book. When I first started it four years ago, my staff said, boss, this is never going to work because nobody's going to come on together. And the first ones were, you know, minuscule bills, but now there are strange bedfellows. I mean, Lindsey Graham and Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren and Chairman Comer and ranking member Raskin, you know, They don't agree on anything. And they were coming to talk about what they're working on together. So I think that, you know, that vehicle too has opened the door to some Democrats.

34:59Max:Do you vote, Brett? I don't. Why not? I don't want to be asked this question about how you voted or, first of all, I lived in D.C. and for the longest time. And, you know, it didn't make sense for me to have to answer one way or another. And I just have always thought that. I did early on in my life. But when I got to this position, I don't know, for some reason, I thought it was important not to. Ben, do you vote? I do vote. I do. And I've always thought, well, you can just like, you can just not say who you voted for. And in a way, like to sort of have a preference and not vote, isn't that different than voting and not telling people?

35:42Yeah, but you don't have to do interviews such as these where media reporters ask you who you voted for.

35:49Max:It literally just happened to me, Max. You just did that. But you can fire me, though. I'm curious. I just want to ask you a couple last questions about this media moment. We're in this moment when this kind of strange moment when television on one hand is said to be collapsing. At the same time, everything, including this, is sort of becoming television. And you've got this very old school show in a certain way. You have a podcast. I'm curious when you look around the landscape, like who do you think is doing interesting stuff? What are you watching? You know, it's a great question. I think I'm tuning into more podcasts.

36:22I'm trying to listen long form to things on one issue. You know, I listen to Joe Rogan just to get a sense of what he's talking about. I listen to other folks that really dive into something for a long term. I don't have a ton of time, So I'm kind of dipping in and out. As far as TV goes, you know, I don't see a lot that's advancing the ball. And I hope there's more. I really do. I'd like to see more news shows, straight news. I do like the documentary stuff that digs in for a full hour on one topic. And I've delved into that for a little bit.

37:02Max:Anything in particular you've seen lately and liked? How about Age of Discovery about the aliens? Did you ever watch that? Oh, man, I'm not an alien guy. Yeah, you're not an alien guy? This was a good documentary. All right. Really, really worth the... Opened my mind. I had the producer-director on. It's really interesting. If there was a 22-year-old version of Brett Baer, who was just starting out today, would they go to Fox? Would they start a subsac? What would you... What would they do, do you think? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I started in small market TV before I got to Fox.

37:34So I was in Beaufort, South Carolina, and Rockford, Illinois, an NBC affiliate, and Raleigh, North Carolina, CBS affiliate. So that was the old school way of bouncing around different affiliates before I started at Fox. Fox is expanding, and we're hiring all kinds of different people and different bureaus. I think it's great. You have to have experience before getting here. But I think that there's many more avenues to get into journalism now and online and Substack. And, you know, I think that there are a ton more pathways than there were when I was 22. Brett, thank you so much. This is a really fascinating conversation.

38:14Really appreciate you stopping by.

38:16Max:Thank you, Brett. You bet. Thank you.

38:47Max:strategy isn't stuck in 2025. Don't just keep up. Stay ahead. Head over to thinkwithgoogle.com today.

39:00So Ben, I thought that that was a really interesting conversation with Brett. I thought we got some fun answers out of him and we asked him some light stuff, but I think that we also asked him some things that he clearly didn't want to talk about, you know, mostly his feelings on CBS News, which is kind of trying to position itself slightly as more of a rival to Fox and tried to hire Brett. But was there anything that stuck out to you about his responses to some of the questions that he asked you? Was there anything surprising?

39:27Max:I was a little bit surprised that he was willing, even mildly, to criticize Trump for, you know, kind of basically being uncivil. I kind of didn't think he was going to bite on that question, more or less. Is he kind of like the last really meaningful primetime evening news anchor who the Senate majority leader is going to block off an hour of their time to watch or the president is going to be sitting down to tune in every evening? Is he kind of the last one who's going to have that role? You're so right, like that kind of political relevance. And it is the classic kind of circle of media in that he has a big audience.

40:03Max:And so the politicians feel like they have to watch. and the fact that the politicians are watching adds to his power. And so it's like a real old-fashioned, this is an important television show. And then, you know, President Xi thinks it'll be going on because he knows that Trump will watch and foreign leaders are on there all the time because he's a, you know, basically straight news guy who will ask questions and the answers will be piped directly to Donald Trump. And the alternative is, you know, going on some like slightly fringier thing where it might get weirder. And I don't actually think there's necessarily anything quite like that in American media right now.

40:35Do you think that that'll still be the case if we have President Newsom as he threw out there as a possible contender in 2028? Is that bad for Bayer? I would imagine that it probably is in some ways.

40:46Max:It's probably good for ratings because like Fox always thrives in opposition. But this current just unbelievable red carpet of world leaders just like marching onto his set to talk to the president of the United States, like that's a really remarkable feature of this moment, I think. If we have President John Ossoff, do we think we're going to get the President Xi on the Ezra Klein podcast? Is that what is going to happen? Oh, my God. A hundred percent. That's such, yeah, that is happening. You should be like, you heard it here first. Absolutely. And you know what? If we get President Newsom, I think we might get some world leaders on this show, as we know that the Newsom folks, a lot of them are fans, as well as, you know, some other folks in some other Democratic offices who are into media.

41:27Max:Yeah, so please, so you should like, subscribe to us on YouTube, follow us on your podcast thing now so that you can get the president of the United States in four years.

41:57the great Steve Bone. Our public editor is Irina Briganti, the head of comms at Fox News.

42:04Max:And if you like this show, please subscribe on YouTube and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want more, you can always sign up for Semaphore's media newsletter, which is out every Sunday night.