Filling in for Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday this weekend, Bret Baier took the opportunity to accuse President Donald Trump of “cancel culture” hypocrisy for saying Fox News should fire the reporter who confirmed the explosive story from The Atlantic about his verbal attacks on the U.S. military.
“Jennifer Griffin should be fired for this kind of reporting,” the president tweeted on Friday after Fox’s national security correspondent confirmed with her sources that, among other things, he had described U.S. service members as “suckers” and “losers.” Trump added, “Never even called us for comment. @FoxNews is gone!”
“Have you ever heard the president use any of that language about veterans, dead or alive, ever being around him?” Baier asked Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin Sunday morning.
ADVERTISEMENT
After Mnuchin insisted that the president “supports the military in an unbelievable way,” the host pushed back. “Well, the president also says he’s against the ‘cancel culture,’” Baier said, referring to one of the major themes of Trump’s Republican National Convention last month. “But do you think it’s right for him to call for the firing of a reporter who has unnamed sources who confirm parts of that story?”
Mnuchin pleaded ignorance, saying, “Bret, I really don’t know anything about that so it’s not something I can comment on.”
But while Baier and few others on Fox have defended their colleague, others like Greg Gutfeld called it a “hoax” and a “scam” after she confirmed it earlier in the day.
Ultimately, Griffin was forced to defend herself on the air with Neil Cavuto on Saturday.
“My sources are unimpeachable,” Griffin told him. “I feel very confident with what we have reported at Fox. Not every line of the Atlantic article did I confirm, but I would say that most of the descriptions and the quotes in that Atlantic article, I did find people who were able to confirm, and so I feel very confident in my reporting.”
In turn, Cavuto called her a “very good reporter” who is “pretty scrupulous when it comes to making sure all the i’s are dotted, all the t’s are crossed.”
