A report published by the New York Times on Fox News’s post-2020 election reckoning over the weekend revealed that Bret Baier suggested the network retract its projection that Joe Biden would win the state of Arizona, prompting accusations that Fox’s chief political anchor was willing to mislead his audience to bolster his ratings.
According to the Times, Baier said that the network should retract the projection on the morning after election day, November 4, 2020. “It’s hurting us,” he wrote in an email, adding that “The sooner we pull it even if it gives us major egg. And put it back in his column. The better we are. In my opinion.”
During a post-mortem held later that month, Baier remarked that he understood the value of “the statistics and the numbers,” when it came to making projections, but submitted that “there has to be, like, this other layer.”
Times reporter Peter Baker characterized Baier’s comments as a suggestion that “it was not enough to call a state based on numerical calculations, the standard by which networks have made such determinations for generations,” and “that viewer reaction should be considered.”
Much outrage was directed toward Baier for his private commentary on the subject. “Yikes. Baier urged network execs to reverse the CORRECT Arizona call,” offered Ted Cruz flak turned cable news conservative Amanda Carpenter. “To all of the people out there who still refer to Bret Baier as a “journalist” who should’ve been allowed to intv President Biden during the Super Bowl … read this,” urged Kurt Bardella.
CNN media critic Brian Lowry concurred with Bardella while his colleague Jake Tapper shared the story and captioned it with a critical quote from its authors. MSNBC’s Ari Melber said Baier was “telling on” himself.
The Times treats the early projection of Biden’s Arizona victory as eminently sound, his ultimate triumph as proof, and Baier’s questioning of the call as outlandish. Yet the bulk of the evidence makes clear the anchor’s caution was warranted.
Fox was the only major outlet to project that Biden would win the Grand Canyon State on November 3rd, although the Associated Press followed suit early on November 4th. Other outlets, including CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS waited over a week for results to trickle in before finally deciding that Biden’s lead was insurmountable.
After Fox made its projection, the head of its decision desk, Arnon Mishkin, said he was confident in it because Fox’s model’s prediction that President Donald Trump would win “only about 44 percent” of the outstanding votes, rendering him unable to erase Biden’s 7-point lead. Trump ultimately won 60 percent of the outstanding votes, obliterating that 7-point lead and coming within a mere 10,000 votes of what Mishkin had deemed impossible.
The fallibility of the decision desk’s statistical model in 2020 was also laid bare by its initial projection that Democrats would pick up a minimum of five seats in the House of Representatives. Republicans ultimately picked up 14.
Baier isn’t the only one to have recognized that Mishkin and his team lucked out.
FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver argued over the weekend that “there wasn’t an adequate basis to call it early on Nov. 3. Not particularly close. They fired too early and got lucky. Narratives to the contrary should be viewed as dubious.”
The Times’s own Nate Cohn said that Mishkin’s commentary on the night of the election made it “clear they [Fox] had no understanding of what was going on,” and Andrew Prokop, senior politics correspondent at Vox, said that based on his “conversations with other election callers, reading analyses, etc.” he concurred with Baier that the call came “too soon.”
In other words, Baier’s skepticism was not only warranted but ultimately vindicated.
What can be fairly scrutinized is his wording about putting “it [Arizona] back in his column.” At first glance, it appears that Baier was suggesting that Fox project Trump as the winner. There’s no doubt that that would have been an unjustified genuflection to viewers’ preferences.
A closer read of his words reveals an alternate explanation: not that he wanted Fox to name Trump as the winner in Arizona, but merely that he was suggesting Fox retract its projection for Biden until they had more information.
This explanation is evidenced by the fact that he used the phrase “back in his column” since Fox had never projected that Trump would win Arizona, as well as the fact that such a move would have been regarded as (short-term) win for Team Trump.
The explanation is also supported by Baier’s on-air performance, at no point during which he so much as hinted at believing that the state should be called for Trump.
Baier’s comments about an extra layer appear to also have been misconstrued. Baker himself reported that he was told by “A person who was in the meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions” that Baier “had been talking about process because he was upset the decision desk had made the Arizona call without letting the anchors know first.”
There is on-air evidence to support this explanation:
One major call of each presidential election since 2000 thread
2020 Arizona flips and the fox anchors don’t even know it’s called. pic.twitter.com/HFbnAhjeEA
— Nicky 🇺🇸 (@NickyScatz) June 22, 2022
On election night 2020, Baier, and his co-hosts were working through scenarios on a board when they discovered that the decision desk had called Arizona without letting the talent know, resulting in an awkward moment and flat-footed transition. Baier, the source said, wanted to make sure an election call did not put anchors in that position again.
The balance of Baier’s record supports this reading of his comments reported in the Times piece. Baier can fairly be called right-of-center in his approach, in the same way that vast majority of anchors on air can be called left-of-center. But he’s never shied away from challenging Republicans when the facts don’t support their rhetoric. Consider this takedown of Senator Josh Hawley‘s (R-MO) strategy going into January 6, 2021. Or his confrontation with Kari Lake last summer. Or his willingness to critique Trump both before and after he left office.
That brings me to a recent critique of Baier leveled by my esteemed colleague Tommy Christopher, who lambasted the anchor last week for an interview he conducted with FBI director Christopher Wray. Tommy argued that Baier’s questions represented an “entire cavalry of right-wing hobby horses,” including the Hunter Biden investigation and Twitter Files.
Yet the questions Baier asked are not insignificant. Millions of Americans are concerned that powerful bureaucrats are using their considerable powers for unscrupulous, political aims. That’s a problem worth addressing even if Tommy is right that there’s no fire beneath the plumes of smoke. What Baier did during his interview of Wray was facilitate a much-needed conversation between those Americans and the FBI; that’s not nefarious, it’s journalism.
It’s obvious why Baier is a target for the left. If the face of Fox’s news division — which has taken pains to distinguish itself from the opinion side — can be discredited, then the very idea of reliable conservative journalists, and the alternative perspective they bring to the table, can be dismissed. Like any and every other journalist, Baier may occasionally make mistakes attributable to his own biases.
The cases being made against him, though, are as politically motivated as he’s accused of being, and marshal less evidence than there is to indict his competitors.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
