Q&A: Fox’s Bret Baier on going head-to-head with Trump, DeSantis and Haley this week

With the Iowa caucuses one week away, the 2024 presidential candidates have a shrinking window of time to woo voters. The leading GOP candidates — Donald Trump, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis — are all headed to Fox News for individual town halls that kick off tonight.

The town halls, which the network says will focus on women’s issues, will be moderated by Fox News anchors Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier, who presided over the first GOP primary debate, held in Milwaukee in August. That debate was the most watched of the three organized by the Republican National Committee.

Back then, eight candidates took the stage. This week, just three (DeSantis, Haley and Trump) qualified for a debate that CNN will air on Wednesday, once again without Trump — who chose that day to go on Fox.

Haley’s town hall on Fox will be from 4-5 p.m. MST today; DeSantis’s will be from 4-5 p.m. Jan. 9.

Trump’s will be at the same time that Haley and DeSantis will debate, Jan. 10 — 7-8 p.m. MST (preempting Sean Hannity’s show). The moderators will draw from questions submitted online when people applied to attend the events.

It’s not the MacCallum-Baier team’s first rodeo. Together they have moderated town halls with presidential candidates that include Sen. Bernie Sanders, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

Baier, who joined Fox in 1998 and is the network’s chief political anchor host of “Special Report With Bret Baier,” spoke with the Deseret News Monday about the timing of Trump’s town hall, the format of the events and the challenge of getting the candidates to deviate from the scripted remarks that they’ve been polishing over the past few months. Like everyone in Iowa in January, he’s also paying attention to the weather, which gets almost as much attention as the candidates in the days leading up to the caucuses.

The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Deseret News: It’s been a little more than four months since you and Martha MacCallum moderated the first GOP debate. What will be different about what you’re doing this week?

Bret Baier: Town halls have a different feel to them. They’re designed to really hear from Iowa voters, and what’s on their mind, and Martha and I become the facilitators of that conversation. I’ve done a lot of town halls, and the best ones are an active conversation with the candidates and the audience. We will ask questions, talk about the news of the day. We’ll definitely follow up on questions that come from the audience, but the primary driver is the voters, and we think that’s important in the days before the caucuses.

DN: Are you in Iowa already?

BB: I am, got in late last night. It’s a balmy 6 degrees, I think. We’re going to get some snow later, so it should be interesting. But you know, weather is a big part of the Iowa caucuses, and how (the weather) looks a week from today is a big driver of who gets out in those schoolhouses and firehouses and gets there to caucus. It’s a different animal politically. But it is also a very astute voter here, who really likes to talk to candidates and even have them in their living room.

Related

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• Haley, DeSantis take aim at Trump during back-to-back town halls

DN: How did the network decide who is going to be in the room for the town halls?

BB: We tried to get as many undecided voters as possible, so it’s a heavy lift, but right now we have a good mix of folks. I don’t know the final number but it’ll be above 500. The campaigns don’t get to choose who is in the room. There’s no choice about questions, no one sees any questions or knows what’s coming. There’s no rehearsal; I’ll see them probably 20 minutes before the town hall starts to say hello, and then we’ll be off and running.

DN: How can you break new ground in these town halls, particularly for people who have been watching the debates and are pretty informed on where these candidates stand? How can you get them to say anything fresh and new and unscripted?

BB: (Laughs.) That’s a great question. It’s how you phrase the questions. How you model them. We try to get the question to where there isn’t an easy exit to talking points. But really, it is the candidate’s decision how they answer them.

You know, things happen. Things have happened today. The Trump campaign is out with a new ad against Nikki Haley about immigration. The Haley campaign is running something against the DeSantis campaign. Getting closer to the caucuses automatically provides snippets of new stuff happening day to day, and then there’s the news of the day — the president is giving a speech today, and we’ll see what comes from that. Ideally, we’re trying to get the newsiest stuff, and to your point, the things that people haven’t heard before.

DN: By this point, we’re used to Trump declining to participate in debates. Do you think there’s any sort of obligation or responsibility for candidates to participate in debates? Has anything been lost over the past couple of months by not having Trump on stage with the others?

BB: I do think so — if I had my druthers, and my wish, I would have the former president on the stage with other candidates. We tried, in two of our debates, really hard to make that happen; we talked to the Trump campaign, but they put a no-go on all debates. But (through the town hall), tough but fair questions from Iowans, from us, is still a value to the viewer, and we will take what we can get.

DN: Why are you airing the Trump town hall during a DeSantis-Haley debate?

BB: It was the Trump campaign’s demand. They would only do it if it was at that time; we offered a number of different times. That was their stipulation. It’s not an RNC-sanctioned debate; it’s on CNN. But they said the former president is only doing it at this time.

DN: You were at Fox during the 2000 election, right?

BB: I was. I was in Tallahassee, going from courtroom to courtroom, looking at hanging chads.

DN: How do you see the next year shaping up, in terms of the craziness of that election in 2000 and what we’re about to go through in 2024?

BB: I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like what we’re about ready to see in 2024. I can’t tell you how the shoes are going to drop. But the fact that you have a former president who is leading in the Republican field, going up against the current president, and the former president is facing legal issues and trials across the country, and you have an electorate who overwhelmingly says they would not prefer either candidate — you add a lot to the mix that we just don’t know. Is a third party going to emerge? The No Labels Party? Do these other candidates take from either side? We’ve seen the last few elections come down to to a few thousand votes in a few swing states. So I would say: buckle up.

It’s a process, right? And we’re starting this process this week. We’ll see how these primaries develop, but each one is important. So don’t just look at the polls and say everything’s over. I’ve been involved with too many elections where the polls have been wrong. Now, there hasn’t been this big a spread, but I think it’s important to look at each election for what it is. And tonight is the start of hearing Iowa voters, and hearing what they want to hear.