Bret Baier Issues Statement Disputing Report He Pushed Fox News Brass to Retract Arizona Call For Biden

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Fox News anchor Bret Baier disputed reporting that he pushed the network to retract its call that Joe Biden won Arizona in the 2020 presidential race.

The Divider, a new book from The New York Times’ Peter Baker and The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser, reported on the administration of former President Donald Trump and the chaos surrounding the 2020 election.

Mediaite obtained a copy of the book, and according to one passage, Baier pushed a top Fox News executive to reverse the network’s call of Arizona for Biden.

In the email to Fox News president Jay Wallace, Baier appeared to be pushing for the network to retract its call.

“This situation is getting uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable. I keep having to defend this on air,” Baier wrote in an email to Fox News president Jay Wallace, per The Divider.

Baier accused the Decision Desk of standing by the call because of “pride” and added: “It’s hurting us. The sooner we pull it—even if it gives us major egg—and we put it back in his column the better we are in my opinion.”

The fact that Baier was calling on Fox News to not only rescind the call, but to declare Trump the winner of Arizona, was “stunning,” wrote Baker and Glasser.

“Arizona never was in Trump’s column. While the margin of his defeat in the state had narrowed since election night, he still trailed by more than ten thousand votes,” they wrote. “Yet the leading news anchor for Fox was pushing not just to say Arizona was too close to call but to pretend that the president had won it.”

Baier issued a statement through a spokesperson on Tuesday insisting his comments were not presented in full context:

The full context of the e-mail is not reported in this book. I never said the Trump campaign ‘was really pissed’ – that was from an external email that I referenced within my note. This was an email sent AFTER election night. In the immediate days following the election, the vote margins in Arizona narrowed significantly and I communicated these changes to our team along with what people on the ground were saying and predicting district by district. I wanted to analyze at what point (what vote margin) would we have to consider pulling the call for Biden. I also noted that I fully supported our decision desk’s call and would defend it on air.

UPDATE: Glasser responded to Baier’s statement with one of her own:

We stand by the reporting in our book, and would note that his statement does not deny the accuracy of the email we reported. In addition, it’s especially notable that Baier wrote in the email that it would be better for Fox News “to put it [Arizona] back in [Trump’s] column.” In fact, Arizona was never in Trump’s column.