Interview: Bret Baier Talks Trump Derangement Syndrome, the Iran Crisis and Fox News Opinion

Bret Baier has a gripe. The Fox News anchor faced blowback Wednesday after he suggested critics of President Donald Trump’s Iran speech might be afflicted by “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Far from having misspoken, Baier argues to Mediaite his comments were taken out of context in headlines on this site and others.

That term has, in recent years, come to be seen as a taunt wielded by Trump’s more puerile boosters to dismiss his critics. It’s often heard on Fox News, but rarely uttered by a news anchor of Baier’s standing. Contrary to what you might think, though, Presidential Derangement Syndrome didn’t originate with Charlie Kirk or another pro-Trump pundit of the sycophant variety.

It was a term coined by the late columnist Charles Krauthammer, an ardent Trump critic and longtime panelist on Baier’s Fox News show, who put forth “Bush Derangement Syndrome” in a 2003 Washington Post column at the advent of the Iraq War.

Mediaite spoke to Baier over the phone about his use of the term, response to the blowback, the Iraq War, Iran conflict and Fox News primetime. Read the interview below, which has been edited for content and clarity.

You faced criticism yesterday for casting some of the response to Trump’s speech on Iran as Trump Derangement Syndrome. Could you address the comments and maybe give me your definition of the term?

Sure. Listen, I think that that if you actually watch the whole soundbite, it’s pretty self-explanatory. But if you read the headlines in the media who cover media, maybe it wasn’t. Obviously, there are legitimate criticisms of this president and administration about how they handle the Iran situation, how they didn’t brief the Gang of Eight beforehand. How they are taking criticism from some corners, most Democrats and Republicans like Mike Lee and Rand Paul about what this briefing was, about the imminence of killing Soleimani.

But, guys like Mike Lee, Rand Paul, some moderate Democrats also give a hat tip to the president for walking off, giving them an off-ramp, deescalating with that speech. And my point in the soundbite, that was answering Bill Hemmer’s question, was that if you have lawmakers who were saying that this is the beginning of to World War III, and then the president said what he says, Iran responds with how they responded, and then there’s this off-ramp, an olive branch given. And those lawmakers can’t acknowledge that, and they continue to criticize on different fronts, then you have to wonder if Trump Derangement Syndrome doesn’t play into some of that. That term, for me, comes back to one of my former panelists, the late, great Charles Krauthammer, who had the construct, started with Bush, but used it a lot when we were analyzing President Trump. He basically described it as, they might not be personally deranged by President Trump but they have a base that has not really recovered from the election and that anybody who represents that in the base and doesn’t want to face a primary or have a demonstration outside of their house has to oppose what President Trump is doing. And that’s kind of the construct as Krauthammer had it. And just because I mentioned that phrase, it just got a lot of pick up and I was kind of surprised by it.

I think there’s a sentiment amongst critics of Trump that while he might occasionally stumble into a successful policy result, it’s rarely the product of a thorough or coherent strategy.

I get it. My point was is that when something good happens, when the end result is good, you can give the hat tip and say, this is a good end result. But also say, I don’t like how we got here. I don’t like the process. I’m not sure that the administration has a broad strategy. But that’s not what some lawmakers on Capitol Hill were doing. And that’s what the point was in the sentence that I was giving. After two and a half years of coverage of this administration, there is plenty of criticism to go around, and we cover all of it. I had Senator Tim Kaine on last night. We had Senator Mike Lee talking live about his criticisms of this briefing. We covered all of that. But if you’re going to be fair, and you’re going to call balls and strikes, you also have to give a hat tip, and you have to say: why isn’t one coming from the people who were calling for an off-ramp?

Do you think there was Obama Derangement Syndrome?

Of course. Pretty much with all presidents — no matter the ideology. And there were Republicans obviously who couldn’t see straight when dealing with the Obama administration. President Obama, Vice President Biden had talked to us, while we were reporting on their administration, saying they were waiting at some point, [thinking] the fever was going to break with Republicans and they were going to be able to get things done. So, yeah, the construct works on both sides. The fact that I couldn’t mention it in the context of that sentence is pretty telling about where we are as far as the sensitivities of what different phrases mean.

I think it’s a phrase which had been co-opted by a side of Trump supporters that use it more as a as a taunting device as opposed to an analytical one.

I get it. I was using it in a Charles Krauthammer way, but I understand it. I don’t regret it. I think if you watch the whole soundbite it’s pretty self-explanatory.

I want to talk about coverage of the Iran conflict. Fox has been on the forefront of reporting on the crisis, including Jennifer Griffin’s breaking news this week. From a media angle, it’s my impression that the press is trying to avoid some of the mistakes that were made in covering the onset of the Iraq war. There’s a lot of media criticism now that there was a march to war in 2003 that was abetted by the media. Do you think press coverage has changed and might be more cautious or skeptical now?

One hundred percent. I was in the Pentagon. And trying to get someone to tell you that Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, Democrat or Republican, or a foreign leader for that matter, or foreign agencies, was very tough. There were very few skeptics, when it came to officials, back in those days. In the wake of the Iraq war, I think there are many more skeptics, and it’s a healthy thing. I think our news efforts, and we have amazing people, you mentioned Jennifer Griffin, Lucas Tomlinson at the Pentagon. We have great stable of reporters and anchors on the news side that obviously want to be first, but want to be accurate, most importantly, and fortunately as this broke we were both.

Do you see the Iran conflict as something that’s going to be a defining story for 2020? Obviously, there’s an election season coming up — that tends to devour most news coverage. Do you think Iran is going to be top of the headlines throughout the year?

Well, I think it depends on what happens next. If the Iran proxies, like the Shia militia and Hezbollah make a mark that’s different than what the Iranian regime is signaling with these missile strikes. If they do something big, yes, I do think it could dominate. But I think if both sides take this off ramp, who knows? Maybe it does lead to negotiations of some sort. I think that’s wishful in one sense, but you don’t know. But if that is the case, I think it becomes less the issue that elections focus on. It’s clearly dominating these recent days in the Democratic primary. Unless something changes, we’re probably going to have that leading up to the Iowa caucuses.

Can you talk a little bit about what Fox has planned for 2020 coverage?

We’re going to take the show on the road to a lot of good places. We’ll be in Iowa for the caucuses. I’ll have my show out there beforehand talking to a bunch of local folks and getting a sense on the ground. We’ll do the same in New Hampshire. We have a full election coverage for the big events like Super Tuesday. There will be likely other events like the [Pete] Buttigieg town hall, that are in the works and we’ll see what comes down the road as far as other opportunities with more candidates.

In recent interviews, when asked about the divide between news and opinion at Fox News, you’ve spoken about having “blinders” on your news program. When looking at the current Iran conflict — and this has happened a few times during the Trump presidency — prime time hosts on Fox can often be part of the story, given how much Trump watches the network and takes cues from prime time. Does that pierce your blinders to an extent or make it harder to ignore the opinion side of your network?

Well, first of all, when I talk about having blinders, I’m focused on my show, how it’s all going to come together, how the reporting is going to be fair, and how we’re covering the big events of the day. That doesn’t mean that I don’t pay attention or watch or understand what the rest of the channel is doing. I am focused on my hour of news. I understand that the president watches Fox. The good part about Fox — the news side is what we are — but on the opinion side, there are a lot of varied voices. You can see that in this Iran coverage, from one show to another it’s completely different. It’s not a monolithic voice. We are under one umbrella, obviously, at Fox. But we do two very different things on news and opinion. That said, you know, there are different voices to listen to on the opinion side as well. And they’re all very good at what they do.

Does the noise from the opinion side, criticism of it, even sometimes criticism from President Donald Trump, make your job more difficult?

Listen, I’ve dealt with this for more than 20 years being at Fox. Some people paint with a broad brush about, you know, our channel overall. So I do my job. Sometimes you get incoming from the president’s Twitter feed, on the news side. Sometimes we don’t. I have a response from viewers on Twitter that sometimes Bob will say, you are so in the tank for Trump. And then two down, Frank will say, I can’t believe you’re such a never-Trumper. And sometimes I feel like saying, Bob meet Frank, Frank meet Bob, you guys work it out and I’m just going to cover the news. So that’s how I look at it. I know all of these opinion guys, I’ve known them for years, they’re really good at what they do. They just do something different. And it doesn’t mean that we’re not under the same umbrella.

Correction: A previous version of this interview misquoted Baier regarding the briefing on the killing of Qasem Soleimani. It has been updated.