Bret Baier Defends Media Criticism of Trump Over White House Return: There are Housekeepers Who Have Been Diagnosed

Colby HallOct 6th, 2020, 1:28 pm

Fox News’ Bret Baier became the personification of balanced news analysis during a Tuesday segment of Outnumbered, which opened with a montage of various opinion news figures breathlessly complaining about President Donald Trump’s made-for-tv return to the White House while recovering from the coronavirus.

The segment opened with a shocked set of Morning Joe ridiculing President Trump for telling the nation to not be afraid of a virus that has killed 211,000 American citizens. Fox News viewers then saw CNN’s Alisyn Camerota criticizing Trump for flouting medical advice, then more Morning Joe mockery.

All in all, it was a relatively tame media montage, but that didn’t keep Melissa Francis from exclaiming “Wow! that is full freak-out.” After Katie Pavlich provided her remarkably predictable Pavlich-ian take on the media, Francis turned to Baier for his assessment of media coverage of Monday evening’s bizarre press op conducted by the Covid-stricken Commander in Chief.

Baier first acknowledged that some opinion journalists are at times over the top, saying “if you let emotion get into your reporting and how you describe things, then it goes over an edge. You go over your skis and you say something that is very opinionated.”

But he then pivoted the “the balance of reporting on what the president did,” and that “the president could be balanced as well, showing that he has his photo op and he puts the mask back on.” In case his fellow panelists on Outnumbered were unaware, Trump’s handling of his coronavirus infection has presented a real danger to people in the White House.

“There are people inside the White House complex who have contracted coronavirus,” the Fox News anchor noted. “There are a couple of housekeepers who have been diagnosed.”

Watch above via Fox News.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet Newsletter
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!

Colby Hall - Founding Editor

Colby Hall is the Founding Editor of Mediaite.com. He is also a Peabody Award-winning television producer of non-fiction narrative programming as well as a terrific dancer and preparer of grilled meats.