Fox News’ Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum Are in “Heaven” Covering 2024 Chaos

“As a political junkie,” Fox News anchor Bret Baier told me, “this is really, really fun.”

I was sitting with him and fellow network anchor Martha MacCallum on the final morning of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. And while many of us in the media center were bleary-eyed after three long days at the political circus, Baier and MacCallum were in “heaven.”

“There’s nothing like these stories,” Baier said.

Indeed, a wild—and high-stakes—election cycle has gotten even more chaotic in recent weeks: The disastrous debate performance by President Joe Biden last month turbocharged questions about his health and mental acuity—and has led to increasing pressure for him to pass the torch to a candidate better positioned to beat Donald Trump. That uncertainty on the Democratic side was already looming over the RNC. But the convention was infused with even more drama when Trump was nearly assassinated at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on the Saturday before. “I didn’t have ‘assassination attempt’ on my bingo card,” Baier said. “Or COVID,” MacCallum added, referring to the White House’s announcement Wednesday that Biden had tested positive and was self-isolating.

In a conversation with Vanity Fair, which has been edited for clarity and length, the two Fox hosts talked about the convention, the state of the relationship between Trump and the conservative network, and a presidential race like no other. “I think the 2024 election is going to be something that people watch and talk about for a really long time,” said MacCallum.

Vanity Fair: What has it been like covering this election? Just thinking back four, eight years ago, can you imagine that we’d be here?

Martha MacCallum: Well, I think, you know, often at conventions, the effort on the part of the parties is to juice up enthusiasm and to bring some emotion and create some drama and compelling storylines. There’s no need to make an effort to do that this time. I mean, what happened last Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania, created a backdrop for this event that I think has propelled it to another level. And I think people are feeling very connected to this event, and very motivated by it, I think. Just by looking at how it’s all been managed and orchestrated, I think any objective observer would say that they’re pulling it off quite effectively.

Bret Baier: I think there was a hunger after COVID to have these in-person conventions—you know, to see the funny hats and the buttons and the balloons coming from the ceiling. But I think the attempted assassination changed the feeling here. It galvanized even some of the skeptical Republicans. And it really gave another boost to the emotion. On the flip side, you know, on the other side of the political aisle, there’s a lot of discontent and disunity and questions, because there’s possibly a new nominee in the making someplace, as it’s becoming more and more evident that President Biden seems like he is going to eventually step down as nominee. That’s cataclysmic as far as a political story. And if you look at the political stories that we’ve been covering, each one is massive.

On a personal level, what’s it been like?

Baier: It’s like drinking from a fire hose. Every day you’re just trying to absorb all the important stuff, tell the important things to the viewers, and not get wrapped up in all of it. But it is a lot to digest, with all these tectonic shifts happening at the same time.

MacCallum: I think if you look at it from the future, looking back, it’s going to be an election period that people will study for a really long time. I think that Donald Trump has been a pivotal, enormous political figure, whether you love him or hate him. This period will be evaluated in terms of the shift that it represents, I think, for the Republican Party. I think it’s been an evolution that’s been going on for quite some time, but I think gone is the moment of the patrician corporate viewpoint of the Republican Party. And now they have worked very hard to relate to people who are more working-class, and I think that’s one of the reasons for the J.D. Vance pick. I think it puts Democrats in a position where they’re back on their heels with voters who have been core for them. And they’re looking for a way to relate to them. And at the same time, they’re scrambling to figure out who their candidate is. So it’s just a political science cornucopia.

Baier: And there’s just, like, these indelible images. That image of President Trump after the assassination attempt—the fist, the flag. That’ll be in history books.

Bret, you have sparred with Trump in the past. I believe he’s called you “nasty.” Donald Trump Jr. claims he was banned from Fox News. The network denied it, but how would you characterize the relationship right now between the network and Trump and his inner circle?

Baier: I think we cover them fairly. Sometimes the former president doesn’t like when it’s critical. That’s just who he is. And we’ve been on the back end of X posts, and formerly tweets, for a long time. That said, we have off-the-record conversations that inform a lot of their thinking. And every host has some access to that ability to understand what they’re thinking as far as their campaign. And so I think it’s a mix: Sometimes publicly, you know, he takes swings, which is fine—it’s usually the news side of the house. But at the end of the day, we’re just trying to cover them fairly and give them a fair shake.

And Martha, you and Bret hosted town halls earlier this year with Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Nikki Haley. Are you surprised—after all the bad blood—that they all came together this week?

MacCallum: Not really. I think it’s natural in politics. The primary is a slugfest between people who are on the same side. I find it unsurprising, actually: I think that politicians put themselves in the best potential position for their future career. And I think they also want very much for their party to come together. One of the interesting dynamics here is that I think Democrats have, in many ways, accurately portrayed Republicans over the past eight years as very divided. And that’s what we saw coming into this primary process. It was an open process. I think that the former president felt that it should have been clear that it was going to be him. But it wasn’t clear. It has been a fluid process. And I think that for Republicans, they can look at it and say, “We gave other people a shot, and this is the person that voters picked.” On the other side, there wasn’t an open primary process. He’s an incumbent president, so that’s natural. But there was no real effort to kick the tires on him as a candidate. And I think they’re suffering the effects of that now.

Baier: And the debate changed the world. Those first moments in the debate, we were on the set, and all of us reacted viscerally in the first answers President Biden gave, and I think that really shook everything. And then just going backward, think about the political resurrection of former president Trump from January 6, 2021—being a pariah in the Republican Party—to coming back. I mean, we have not seen a figure like this ever in politics.

What do you think that says about where the Republican Party is in 2024 compared with 2020 and especially 2016? I mean, you can see the evolution just in Ted Cruz’s speeches at the convention eight years ago versus this year’s.

MacCallum: Every few decades, you see a shift in political parties and who they represent. I think one of the most interesting things to cover in politics is that movement: Which party is answering people’s questions? Which party is giving them hope? And I say this based on conversations I’ve had with prominent Democrats who feel that their party has lost its way. So that’s a moment for the country. And I agree with Bret 100%: January 6—nobody would have thought that day that we would be sitting here today waiting for the former president to give his speech accepting his nomination, because it felt that that moment was not surmountable. But he’s a fighter, which makes him so interesting to cover.

Baier: It’s much more populist, the Republican Party. That shift is happening. But there are real questions about big issues that the country has to eventually face. Neither party is talking about the national debt or deficits as part of their pitch. Just think, a couple of cycles ago, the Republican candidates, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, were campaigning in front of a debt clock. We don’t even hear about any of that anymore. So there are big issues that we haven’t heard about in the campaign, and hopefully we will before we get to November.

Any predictions for November?

Baier: It’s tough to do predictions. We don’t even know who the nominee is on the Democratic side. If you just look at the polls, the former president is really well positioned today, especially in swing states, to win if it was Joe Biden. But I can’t tell you if it’s Kamala Harris, or if it’s a young ticket. And so I think in the next two weeks, this race could completely change.

MacCallum: I think that if there’s a new ticket, it’s hard for me to imagine at this point that it’s not Kamala Harris. The role of a vice president is to step in if the president can’t do the job. So watching how that plays out is going to be really interesting. And if they do try to create a new ticket with some kind of mini primary at the convention—well, that’s going to be a great story for us to cover.