Fox News anchor Bret Baier strongly pushed back on reports from Monday night that claimed that the network had banned surrogates for former President Donald Trump from appearing on the network’s post-debate spin room since the former president was refusing to participate in the debate.
Baier, who is co-hosting the first Republican Party primary debate tomorrow in Milwaukee with Martha MacCallum, addressed the matter on Tuesday during an interview on “The Hugh Hewitt Show.”
“There’s a story this morning that he has agreed to turn himself in in Atlanta on Thursday,” Hewitt said. “Do you think he plans this? Because that would be the worst counter-programming ever if that’s voluntary.”
Baier responded, “I think there has to be some planning. I mean, I think it is about sucking the oxygen out of the room for anybody. You had a big night on Wednesday making the rounds on Thursday. I do think that they’re as, they’re calculated like that. It’s not a great counter-programming thing, but I do think it is calculated.”
“I do want to say one other thing about, there’s all these stories out there about surrogates, Trump surrogates, and how they’re not being allowed into the debate,” Baier continued. “That’s not the case at all. It’s, if they get invited to the debate, first of all, the RNC handles all the tickets. If they are an elected official, they get a ticket no matter what. If they are a surrogate and they get invited, they get to go. As far as in the spin room, it is the candidates on the stage and their delegates. And then if any media organization who’s in the spin room invites one of these surrogates, a Trump surrogate, they are welcome to come. They have to get the invite from the media person in the room.”
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Baier said that, for example, opinion host Sean Hannity could invite Trump surrogates on his show if he wanted to, adding that the stories about the surrogates being blocked were “not true.”