Fox News Anchor Bret Baier Lets Trump Skate Over Racist Attacks on Nikki Haley

Fox News anchor Bret Baier let former President Donald Trump completely skate on the racist part of his attacks on former Ambassador Nikki Haley.

Republicans have been engaging in the nakedly racist tactic of referring to her as “Nimarata” — her born first name — rather than her born middle name and chosen moniker Nikki for quite some time. One Mar-a-Lago member screamed during a speech recently “MR. PRESIDENT, HER NAME IS NIMERATA!”

But Trump tried a new wrinkle on the attack recently by dubbing Haley “Nimbra” — adding an additional layer of otherizing racism to the already-racist attack.

On this week’s edition of Fox News Channel’s Mediabuzz, Baier showed off his pull-aside interview with Trump in New Hampshire, during which he meekly asked Trump to explain the fun new nickname. Trump’s answer was complete nonsense:

BRET BAIER: So when she points back to you praising her, and now she says that you’re using a nickname based on her given name, Nimrata, you called her Nimbra in the post the other day. Why do you do that?

DONALD TRUMP: I do that with a lot of people like Hutchinson. I mean, he was polling at zero for about one year and I called him rather than Asa, I called him Ada Hutchinson and it just felt good to me. And with her, it’s just something that came. It’s a little bit of a takeoff on her name. You know, her name, wherever she may come from.

“You know, her name, wherever she may come from.”

A huge tell. Baier appeared to almost notice it, asking Trump, “What do you mean by that?” — although there’s a lilt to his voice that more indicates amused bafflement than an incisive follow-up.

If he noticed the racist element, though, nothing Baier said would alert viewers, as he just let Trump skate by with an even more nonsensical answer that referenced another nakedly racist attack:

DONALD TRUMP: It’s a little bit of a takeoff. I look at her name, I look at a lot of people, and I do a lot of names for people like Pocahontas. Uh, she said “My mother said I look like an Indian.” So I started calling her Pocahontas.

Some people say I’m very good at that, but, uh, I can’t get into too many because many of those people that I named like that are Republicans, and we don’t want to bring that up, but, uh, no, it’s just, uh, it’s a takeoff. I have fun with it. And sometimes, to tell you the truth, it’s a very effective tool.

Baier then just moved right along. Who can say why Baier completely ignored Trump’s naked racism even when he slipped up during their interview multiple times?

I won’t even try. Apropos of nothing, what I will do is observe that someone like Maggie Haberman manages to call Trump out on the regular — and still has more access to him than she literally knows what to do with.

Watch above via Fox News Channel’s Fox News Sunday.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.