Tongues wagged on social media, morning television and even Fox News after the network aired Bret Baier’s interview with former President Donald Trump on Monday.
During the sit-down — Trump’s first since getting hit with federal charges earlier this month — the Fox News host pressed Trump to explain details from the grand jury’s 37-count indictment, which stemmed from his handling of sensitive documents after leaving the White House.
Trump addressed specific claims from the indictment with rambling answers, which Fox News analyst Brit Hume later characterized as verging on “incoherent.”
At one point, Baier confronted Trump about a July 2021 recording from a meeting in which the former president acknowledged holding on to a classified document about a potential attack on Iran, seemingly contradicting his defense that he declassified everything he took.
Trump’s answer was difficult to decipher, but he initially said that he couldn’t declassify it “because I wasn’t president” at the time, echoing what he said in the recording. He then pivoted to saying that “there was no document” at all.
“Well that’s that,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) tweeted, sharing a clip of that exchange. “Trump just confessed to Fox News that he stole and shared classified materials.”
Other critics, commentators and legal experts also weighed in, estimating that Trump’s attorneys probably weren’t too pleased with the performance.
“It seems like deputy special counsel Bret Baier filleted the defendant today,” conservative attorney George Conway joked.
On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” host Mika Brzezinski said the interview “did not go well for the former president,” describing it as “incoherent and possibly incriminating.”
“Trump bounced between defenses there,” Brzezinski said. “Sometimes saying the documents had been declassified, sometimes saying there were no documents at all.”
The “Morning Joe” hosts, along with numerous others, also praised Baier for his handling of the interview.