Eighth January 6th hearing made Donald Trump 'look horrific': Fox News host

25 July 2022

While CNN and MSNBC have been offering in-depth, comprehensive coverage of the bipartisan January 6 select committee’s series of hearings, many of the far-right opinion hosts at Fox News and Fox Business have either ignored the hearings or outright attacked them. But on Sunday, July 24, Fox News’ Bret Baier spoke candidly about the hearing that had been held during prime-time viewing hours on Thursday, July 21 — and acknowledged that the evidence presented made former President Donald Trump “look horrific.”

That night, members of the select committee took a close look at Trump’s actions when the U.S. Capitol Building was being attacked on January 6, 2021. The participants during the hearing included its chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, and the co-chair, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, as well as Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia and Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. Although most members of the committee are Democrats, Cheney and Kinzinger are conservative Republicans chosen by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Baier, discussing the 187-minute period the committee examined on July 21, told his colleagues, “Laying out all these 187 minutes makes him look horrific, it really does…. To hear it and see it in that chronological order can be very powerful.”

The 51-year-old Baier, who has been with Fox News since the late 1990s, found the July 21 testimony of former Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger and former Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Matthews especially compelling.

"All of these people who have been testifying at one point or another wanted Trump to win," Baier noted. “They served under his leadership. They wanted him to be a success.”

Business Insider’s Mia Jankowicz, reporting on Baier’s comments, stressed that others at Fox News have a very different view of the hearings — one that is much more negative.

“Baier's criticisms of Trump on the Rupert Murdoch-owned network were not unexpected, despite Fox's strongly conservative leanings,” Jankowicz explains. “But they by no means reflect the network's mainstream view. Fox News' most watched opinion host, Tucker Carlson, invited the Trump strategist Steve Bannon onto his show Friday just hours after Bannon had been found guilty of contempt of Congress for not complying with a subpoena by the House select committee. Bannon called for a ‘real’ hearing, baselessly saying the bipartisan committee was presenting ‘lies and misrepresentations.’”

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