Cracks Are Forming At Fox New As Bret Baier Confirms ‘Concerns’ About Tucker Carlson’s ‘Patriot Purge’ Special

Things have been a little tense at Fox News. First top brass required that its employees get COVID vaccines (or negative tests), all while hosts like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham railed against them on air. Then Carlson went and released Patriot Purge, a “documentary” series that peddled conspiracy theories and other nonsense about the Capitol siege. That was a bridge too far for some of their relatively more serious colleagues. Two longtime contributors quit in disgust, while a handful — including Chris Wallace and Bret Baier — went so far as to voice concerns to top brass.

What Wallace and Baier objected to has not been made public. But the latter elaborated a bit when he joined fellow Fox News personality Brian Kilmeade on the latter’s radio show. Kilmeade, of the morning show Fox & Friends, asked Baier (via Mediaite), host of the more hard-hitting Special Report, about the departure of contributors Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg, who declared Carlson’s lie-strewn series the last straw.

“I think it was a tough choice but one that they made on principle,” Baier said, though he didn’t go much further, saying he was “going to let them speak for themselves.” Baier did say that, personally, he’s interested in hearing “all kinds of voices: left, right, Trump, whoever, supporters.”

Kilmeade didn’t let it go, though. He tried to semi-defend Carlson’s offending program, saying it had an “interesting perspective” on Jan. 6. “I didn’t get hurt by it. I didn’t get damaged by it,” he informed Baier, then asked him, “Were you bothered by it? Because that’s the reporting.”

What followed was a loud sigh and an awkward pause. Eventually he simply told him, “Brian, I don’t want to go down this road.” He told him “You know, I mean, there were concerns about it definitely,” presumably about Carlson’s “reporting.” He danced around the subject, cryptically saying “there were concerns about it, definitely,” and pointing out that “the news division did what we do we do when we covered the story.”

In any case, fun times over at the station that airs the guy who tells his viewers to harass people wearing masks.

You can hear Kilmeade and Baier’s uncomfortable exchange below.

(Via Mediaite)