Fox News host Bret Baier said he made a “mistake” on Wednesday night during a combative interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, playing the wrong clip that didn’t include full remarks of former President Donald Trump threatening to use the military against his critics.
Baier interviewed the vice president during a tense half hour on Wednesday. During a particularly hostile question, Harris pointed to Trump’s repeated remarks that he would punish his political opponents, noting he had labeled his critics “the enemy within” America.
The Fox News host rebutted that claim, throwing to a short clip of Trump defending his remarks and saying his comments had been exaggerated. Harris, however, forcefully pushed back and said the clip did not include Trump’s most inflammatory remarks.
“That clip was not what he has been saying about the enemy within that he has repeated when he speaking about the American people,” Harris said. “That’s not what you just showed. You didn’t show that, and here is the bottom line: He has repeated it multiple times. And you and I both know that, and you and I both know he has talked about turning the military on the American people.”
“He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest, he has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him,” she went on. “This is a democracy.”
Baier acknowledged that the wrong clip was played on Wednesday night and that he meant to show both Trump commenting on the “enemy within” while also defending himself and saying he wasn’t “threatening anybody.”
“I did make a mistake and I want to say the mistake,” the host said Thursday. “When I called for a sound bite, I was expecting a piece of ‘the enemy from within,’ from Maria Bartiromo’s interview to be tied to the piece from your town hall, Harris, where you asked the former president about ‘the enemy from within.’”