When it comes to clear analysis, there are few in the TV business better than Fox News’ Bret Baier. But right before the election, he was stuck.
He had finished writing his new book about President Eisenhower and the transition to John F. Kennedy and wanted a final chapter to tie in former President Obama’s parallel effort with his successor.
The problem: His deadline for “Three Days In January” was before the fall election. So he wrote two endings. And like practically everybody in the country, he bet on Democrat Hillary Clinton to win.
“So I wrote two endings,” he said. “I wrote an ending that Hillary Clinton won. This is the one I spent most time on, and the lessons that Hillary Clinton could learn from Eisenhower. And I really crafted it, tried to make it perfect.”
Fox’s Bret Baier has written a page turner about Ike.
And, he said, “I spent time, but not as much time, on Donald Trump wins.” In it he wrote of the similarities between the relatively inexperienced Kennedy and first-time office winner Trump.
Baier speaking about his book at the National Archives.
One reason for his skepticism was that he wrote it right after the leak of the tape of Trump and TV gossip reporter Billy Bush talking lewdly about women.
“I’m thinking this is going to be really good fiction at that moment,” he told a National Archives lunchtime crowd last week.
But almost exactly one month later, he said, “As I announce on election night at 2:30 in the morning that Pennsylvania has gone for Donald Trump and he will be the 45th president of the United States, I’m thinking, ‘You know, that chapter really works.'”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
