New Yorker editor David Remnick confronted Fox News anchor Bret Baier about his off-the-record golf outings with President Donald Trump.
As part of an in-depth conversation on The New Yorker Radio Hour over the weekend, Remnick challenged Baier — an avid golfer who reportedly has a stout 2.7 handicap — about his invitations to tee it up with the president.
“I’m not by any stretch of the imagination saying you are close friends with or even friends with Donald Trump, but you have played golf with him a number of times,” Remnick said. “Is there not some peril in that kind of relationship?”
“I think it’s a great question,” replied Baier “I answer it this way. Tell me the journalist that won’t take the three-hour off-the-record ability to pick the brain of the commander-in-chief, the president who’s making these big decisions in an environment that is more relaxed that perhaps he’s more open to talking about different things, to get you a sense of where his head is in the middle of all these big things. Tell me that journalist who doesn’t take that, and I’ll say, I don’t know who turns it down.”
“It doesn’t run the risk of coziness so that you start giving him the benefit of the doubt?” Remnick asked.
Baier’s answer referenced a contentious 2023 interview he had with Trump to defend his more amiable off-the-record session on the links with the president.
“I don’t think it’s bad to let him say his piece and to hear that side and press respectfully, but pointedly.” Baier said. He added, “Maybe he doesn’t love the interview — which is the one I was, I had still played golf with him right around the time that I did that interview.”
The Fox News anchor then turned the tables on Remnick.
“Would you go out for three-and-a-half hours with Barack Obama?” Baier asked.
Remnick made clear that he would not turn down a similar invite.
“I’ve had any number of off-the-record conversations with him,” Remnick replied. “And I find it deeply … I’ll be very honest, I find the whole off-the-record thing very frustrating.”
Listen above, via The New Yorker Radio Hour.
