One convention was finished, another loomed, but something seemed off as Martha MacCallum left Milwaukee. The former president had just accepted the nomination of his party, and the current president was hell-bent on soon doing the same. The pieces were nearly in place. At least on paper.
She still couldn’t shake the feeling, “just on a Spidey-sense level,” that all the unprecedented twists and history-making turns were not over. Forty-eight hours later, Bret Baier swerved to the side of the road. He was driving to the airport to pick up his family when his phone buzzed with an X notification.
Their shared hunch was right – Joe Biden would withdraw from the race.
They were both on air, by phone first and later in person, to run another wind sprint in their marathon special coverage of the 2024 presidential election. “I thought at least I’d have a free weekend,” Baier joked during an interview with RealClearPolitics, as if there was a universe where newsmen would have it any other way.
No, this is the story of a lifetime with Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, one without breaks or any kind of modern comparison. The next chapter starts this week in Chicago as they continue to co-anchor “Fox News Democracy 2024.” The latest edition: the Democratic National Convention. The unanswered question: How will Vice President Kamala Harris handle the cable television behemoth with easily the biggest audience in each of the swing states that will determine the election?
Their coverage will kick off Monday, and that question will perhaps start to be answered when the outgoing president gives at least his third official goodbye.
The pair never bought the White House line about Biden; that he was the picture of health at 81, that he ran circles around younger staffers, and that the videos of him wandering off were “cheap fakes.” They aired the tape unedited instead, said the anchor of “Special Report With Bret Baier,” recounting a refusal to “sugar coat anything.” Off-the-record interactions with the president from years before, on top of the public record, convinced the Fox News heavyweight that the age of the president would be “a serious issue that was going to be a big issue in the campaign.”
The speculation began in earnest after Atlanta. “Democrat sources were just churning and burning up my phone,” the anchor of “The Story With Martha MacCallum” told RCP. The moment Biden stepped off stage after a disastrous debate, everyone was suddenly obsessed with the issue that, up until then, only Fox News had any time focusing on: The age and mental acuity of the president. “I think, in the end, we should not have been surprised that he got pushed out,” MacCallum said.
Nothing seems to surprise them anymore, even as both anchors admit that nothing compares to the last seven weeks of news. Together, they have covered everything from the attempted Trump assassination to the slow-motion Biden defenestration. And while Fox is known for opinion shows, loved by the right and loathed by the left, during this election cycle the channel has put its news desk forward at every step.
“The most rewarding thing for us,” MacCallum explained, has been that “people are tuning in to us when something huge is happening in a way that they used to tune into a place like CNN.” It is that ability to turn on a dime and digest history as it happens, Baier said, that “has enabled us to build up a reservoir of trust with viewers.”
Critics may call those claims boastful, but no one can dispute the numbers. Consider the Republican National Convention. When Trump accepted a third consecutive nomination, 9.8 million viewers turned to Fox News, per Nielsen data, including 1.9 million in the coveted 25-54 demographic. The competition wasn’t even close. CNN and MSNBC attracted a combined audience of just 3.1 million, less than a third of what Fox News bagged.
In Chicago, Baier said Democrats will now “get their week in the sun.” The pair will host their regular programming live from the Windy City, and then together, they will co-anchor special coverage in prime time beginning at 9 p.m. ET. “Fortunately, the Democrats are letting us in a little bit behind the curtain to brief us and talk to us,” he added of preparations for the convention. “We hope to have really balanced coverage throughout the week.”
A small constellation of Democratic stars will cluster around the network suite above the convention floor. Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg is slated for an interview. So are California Gov. Gavin Newsom, once billed as a Biden potential successor, and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, widely considered the runner-up in the recent veepstakes. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz? He already had his.
“Why did Fox News put up Tim Walz, Governor of Minnesota, where I am leading? They make me fight battles that I shouldn’t have to fight!” former President Trump complained in a July post on Truth Social. Walz had just wrapped an interview on “America’s Newsroom with Dana Perino and Bill Hemmer,” all but openly auditioning to join Harris on the ticket. It was hardly a softball.
Those hosts grilled the governor on the rushed process to nominate Harris, asking if it was fair to bypass the primary process, and pushed him to defend the Biden record, noting for instance that the president hadn’t fired anyone in nearly four years. Walz was all Midwestern charm in response, disagreeing without being disagreeable while making sure to drop his tagline. “J.D. Vance,” he said in response to the Ohio senator’s allegation that Democrats were subverting the democratic process, “mind your own business.” Two weeks later, Harris picked Walz.
While the governor has a standing invitation to return any time, Baier and MacCallum now have their eyes on a bigger prize. They want to host a presidential debate, and MacCallum said that she hopes the Harris-Walz campaign views their convention coverage as another demonstration of what Fox News has to offer. “I think if they’re watching our coverage,” she said, “they will see us as fair arbiters.” Negotiations are ongoing, Baier said, as the network and party continue to have “a healthy discussion.”
More than one Democrat has walked into the Fox News den and, if properly prepared, emerged unscathed. Some have even left triumphant.
When the DNC snubbed the network during the last presidential primary, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders bucked party brass and agreed to a town hall. Baier and MacCallum did not dial it back, and they didn’t just grill the democratic socialist on the usual policy. They made him answer uncomfortable questions about his age and newfound wealth. For his part, Sanders welcomed the exchange. “Thank you very much,” the senator joked at the end of a night where he gave as good as he got. “I hope I wasn’t too hard on you.” The reviews were positive.
On MSNBC the next day, Joe Scarborough of “Morning Joe” gushed that Sanders had just pulled off a comms coup, that it had been “a brilliant move.” He said more Democrats should test their mettle on Fox News. And they listened. Half a dozen candidates followed suit. Not Harris, though. The California Democrat dropped out before the 2020 Iowa caucuses.
Four years later, Harris is in no hurry to interrupt her honeymoon. The Democratic standard-bearer for little more than a month, she has stood up the entire press corps. MacCallum doesn’t believe the cold shoulder can last. “She doesn’t seem like she’s afraid to answer tough questions,” the anchor said of the Democratic nominee, whom they are happy to host for a debate, a town hall, or an interview. “Hopefully it starts to happen really soon.”
“With time, with big interviews and experience, with Democrats coming on,” Baier said of what the pair has to offer, “the word gets out, and I think our history – this is my ninth election cycle – has been pretty stellar on both sides. If anything, we’ve been accused of being too tough on Republicans.”
The anchors are ready to roll out the red carpet with the understanding that once a candidate walks on set, they can expect a respectful brawl. “My pitch is that it’s worth it. There’s a quantitative result. The ROI is pretty good on our interviews,” Baier said. “They get a lot of attention.”
This is an understatement from the biggest kid on the cable news block. Fox doesn’t just have the biggest national audience. They have the biggest audience where it matters most: the swing states. Voters across the political spectrum, from the upper Midwest to the Sun Belt, will tune into Fox News as they make up their minds. For example, look to Arizona, a state that has bounced between Republicans in 2016 and Democrats in 2020. According to Nielsen data for the month of July, Fox News had 67% of the audience share there. CNN and MSNBC both attracted 16% a piece.
The same holds true for each of the other nine battleground states, from Nevada in the west to Michigan in the middle and Georgia in the east. The voters who will likely decide the result in November have been tuning in to Fox New for months, meaning that the road to 270 Electoral College votes, and the White House, runs through the desk that Baier and MacCallum anchor.
Democrats have seen this data, and former New York Rep. Steve Israel has had the conversation before. Once chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, now a member of the DNC platform committee, Israel said there was a time he’d tell the Fox News bookers who came calling asking after members of his caucus, “Why should I advocate for them to go to their own firing squads?” Well, he said, answering his own question years later, it’s “to meet the voters where they are.”
“It’s an election that comes down to the wire in a few dozen media markets in eight states. So, in a razor-thin election, you can’t leave a single vote on the table,” Israel told RCP. “And if that voter is tuning in to Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, you’ve got to speak to them.” What his party needs now, he argued, is “more candidates who can walk onto a Fox News set and hold their own.” He pointed to Buttigieg and Newsom, candidates who have done exactly that, as “models more Democrats should emulate.”
Tim Ryan took that advice while running for president. After regularly appearing on the channel, the former Ohio congressman agreed to a town hall during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. He saw it “as an opportunity to show you’ve got guts” and a willingness to leave “your comfort zone.” What can a Democrat expect from Fox News? According to Ryan, “real questions that people deserve answers to.”
“I have always felt like they were respectful,” he said of Baier and MacCallum. “They let you get your point across,” he added. “They’ll push back,” he concluded, because after all, “they should as journalists.” But completing an appearance on Fox News isn’t just a badge of honor for a Democrat.
There is a valuable constituency to tap into. “I don’t think their viewership is as extreme as Trump or Vance,” Ryan said before pointing to the large number of what he called the “lunch bucket Democrats,” voters more concerned with the economy than liberal social pieties, who tune in regularly. The Fox News audience breakdown, per a May YouGov survey, is unsurprisingly 54% Republican but also notably 28% independent and 22% Democrat.
Should Harris appeal directly to that audience? Ryan, who was one of the first Democrats to call on Biden to step aside, replies that while the vice president is getting “real lift” with her current strategy, long-term, “I wouldn’t be afraid to go on there.” Others have already echoed that message.
“That’s something that I’ve suggested to a lot of liberals, especially the VP now running for president: Go on Fox,” Charlamagne Tha God said during a recent taping of SiriusXM’s hugely popular morning show, “The Breakfast Club.” Again, there is precedent. “President Obama used to do it. Gavin Newsom did it. When he started doing it, they started talking about him running for president. Sec. Buttigieg does it all the time,” he continued. “Go on there!”
A word of caution from Ryan: Stick to the news shows. “I wouldn’t send her on Hannity,” he said of the king of conservative cable news opinion. “I’m not a masochist.” Not everyone has gotten that memo, most notably Newsom, the liberal California governor the right loves to loathe. Earlier this year, he agreed to “the Great Red vs. Blue State Debate.” His prime-time opponent: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The moderator: Sean Hannity. Newsom seemed to savor his time in the national spotlight.
But Hannity doesn’t often referee. That job goes to Baier and MacCallum, like it did when they hosted the first GOP primary debate last year. And it is those big moments, particularly when the other side of the aisle is involved, that come with additional scrutiny. For instance, the press corps didn’t point to whatever Rachel Maddow opined about the night before on MSNBC to question the credibility of that network when they landed a big sit-down with Biden.
The industry double standard, MacCallum said, “is a question that is on my mind a lot.” For nearly a decade now, she has watched as “some opinion folks on the other channels” relentlessly bash the former president without causing too much trouble for their colleagues in the news division. That approach has earned the competition some mean tweets, but it hasn’t landed them on a Trump blacklist.
“No politician can look at the comments of a few people and say, ‘Oh, I'm never going there,’” MacCallum said. The news business, the anchor explained, “doesn’t work that way.” She invites scrutiny of the press, but ultimately, when auditioning to be the leader of the Free World, a politician must be able “to say ‘I'm strong enough and capable enough to go talk to anyone, anywhere.’”
And when politicians of all stripes look at Fox News, what will they see? “A long history of interviewing people on all sides of the aisle,” MacCallum replied. “I really hope we're not getting into a place in politics where everybody just sort of hunkers down in their corner."
Baier hears that criticism, too. Like MacCallum, he has watched as critics “have painted with a broad brush” to willfully ignore the distinction between the news and opinion sections. “We both have jobs to do, and they're different but under the same umbrella,” he said of his more inflammatory colleagues. “Together, we've been a big success.”
The anchors are confident they understand their audience better than the critics anyway. “Fox viewers know the difference,” he said of the breakdown between commentary and reporting. He added, “I think increasingly Democrats appreciate the difference too.” They aren’t too wrapped up in any kind of media criticism, what MacCallum dismissed as ultimately “inside baseball.” They don’t have much time with the current pace of politics anyway. The pair are content to let their work speak for itself. They are in the middle of the story of a lifetime.
“There has been nothing like this,” Baier admitted on the eve of the Democratic convention. Viewers, the ones who will decide the future of the nation, meanwhile, are tuning in with real interest. “They are trying to figure out what is the next shoe to drop.”
As always, Baier and MacCallum will be there to cover it, this time from the Windy City.
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