Bret Baier Says Trump Plays ‘Cat-and-Mouse Game’ With the Press: Reaches Out to Same People He Calls ‘Nasty’

Fox News’ Bret Baier argued President Donald Trump plays a “cat and mouse” game with the media while breaking down the president’s “love-hate” relationship with Fox.

Baier joined David Remnick on The New Yorker Radio Hour where he discussed his 27-year career at Fox News, and he offered his take on Trump’s relationship with the media. Remnick noted that the president has a “love-hate” relationship with Fox News, sometimes slamming the network’s coverage in real time, but also adding more than a dozen former Fox employees to his administration, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

Beier noted his own up-and-down relationship with Trump, including a heated interview in 2023, which Trump called “nasty” after Baier pressed him on his 2020 presidential election conspiracy theories. The Special Report anchor even busted out his own Trump impression to recall the president telling him he’s a “five” and sometimes a “four,” but he’s not a “seven.”

Baier was unbothered by the criticism, noting that he’s golfed with the president, including around the time of their contentious interview.

The Fox anchor argued that as much as Trump criticizes the media and refers to it as the “enemy of the people,” he’s more accessible than any other president, with many journalists, including Baier, having his personal number.

“I think it is part of the man. I think it is part of his time here in New York as a New York real estate mogul, and the rough and tumble to punch back and to characterize your opposition before they can characterize you. I think that’s part of it,” Baier said about the president. “I think it is this cat-and-mouse game. You know, for all of the things he says about the media. Again, he’s reaching out and doing interviews with the same people he says are nasty.”

Baier said that he has expressed to Trump his displeasure with him referring to the media as “the enemy of the people.”

“I wish he wouldn’t use it,” he said, keeping Trump’s private response to his displeasure off the record.

On his role at Fox as an anchor, Baier argued critics “paint with a broad brush” and many criticize the network without watching it and its straight news shows.

“The people who have a really, really big problem with Fox likely haven’t watched Fox,” he said. “So I tell people watch my show for three times, drop me a post, and say, was this show fair?”

Listen to the full Baier interview here.