Former President Donald Trump sat for an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier this week, and the network aired the interview on Monday and Tuesday nights.
The takeaway for many, at least from the first night of the interview, was that the former president had incriminated himself and that for a criminal defendant to agree to such an interview was probably ill-advised.
Interview with Donald Trump
In the interview, Baier pushed back on many of Trump’s false statements, especially his claim that he won the 2020 presidential election.
At one point, Baier confronted Donald Trump with his claim that he would execute drug dealers, while he bragged at the same time about his pardon of drug dealer Alice Johnson.
One pundit noticed something else: Trump looked afraid during the interview.
According to Tom Nichols of The Atlantic, a never-Trump Republican type, the former president was “jittery and combative” during his interview with Baier. But, Nichols noted, “something was different this time.”
“Trump seemed not himself—or at least not the character he’s been presenting to the public for most of his life,” Nichols noted of Trump’s performance in the interview. “Instead, he seemed deeply uneasy in an environment where he should have felt at home … Through it all, Trump seemed genuinely off-balance … This was not the same Trump who took instant charge of CNN’s town-hall interview, in which he owned a New Hampshire stage and bulldozed the CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins out of his way while playing to a hooting and applauding crowd.”
The interview, after all, was with Baier, who while a veteran Fox host is someone who can be counted on to deliver something resembling a real, journalistic interview, rather than the type of fawning praise that Trump received during recent sit-downs with the likes of Sean Hannity and Mark Levin.
“Why did he—or anyone on his staff—think it would be a good idea to sit in a quiet room, alone with an experienced reporter?” Nichols asks. “His natural habitat is not the tranquil interview salon but the packed house, the rally, the press conference, where he can line up his opponents—liberals, other Republican candidates, his former staff, reporters—like ducks in a rhetorical shooting gallery, each hollow metallic ding of a hit producing a roar of applause.”
Nichols also concluded that perhaps worry about the charges hanging over him in the indictment had him flustered.
“Perhaps his trip to a federal courtroom in Miami has finally induced a fear that he could face real consequences for his actions,” Nichols wrote. “His former chief of staff John Kelly thinks so, saying recently that he believes Trump is ‘scared shitless.’ That would explain a lot about Trump’s defensiveness during the Fox interview.”
This week, Donald Trump received more reason to be afraid. Per CNN, prosecutors handed over the first phase of discovery documents to Trump’s attorneys, and they show that “investigators collected for the case multiple recordings of the former president – not just audio of an interview Trump gave at Bedminster for a forthcoming Mark Meadows memoir.”
The discovery materials include “the grand jury testimony of witnesses who will testify for the government at the trial of this case,” per CNN’s description of the special counsel’s statement.
The case has a trial date of August 14, although it’s very possible that there will be some delays in the case. That date indicates that the trial could be complete before the voting starts in the 2024 election – and that the former president could enter the primary season having been convicted of federal crimes.
Trump, on Wednesday, asked Congress to intervene.
“CONGRESS, PLEASE INVESTIGATE THE POLITICAL WITCH HUNTS AGAINST ME CURRENTLY BEING BROUGHT BY THE CORRUPT DOJ AND FBI, WHO ARE TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL. THIS CONTINUING SAGA IS RETRIBUTION AGAINST ME FOR WINNING AND, EVEN MORE IMPORTANTLY TO THEM, ELECTION INTERFERENCE REGARDING THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION,” Trump said on Truth Social.
Expertise and Experience:
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
From 19FortyFive
Donald Trump Is Starting to Scare Everyone
