On Monday night, as Fox News anchor Bret Baier was interviewing Donald Trump—memorably contesting many of the ex-president’s false claims, eliciting a possible admission of obstruction, and calling into question the one-time Apprentice star’s talent recruitment pedigree—the chattering classes who usually lament Fox’s toxic effects on American political culture rendered an opposing, near-unanimous verdict. In their estimation, Baier had conducted a masterful interview, a respectful but rigid grilling, an act of journalism that served as antidote to that inglorious CNN town hall. 

It was a pleasant reversal of fortune for Baier. Months earlier, after all, he had absorbed a reputational hit after the Glasser-Baker power couple revealed that he’d lobbied his network to rescind its pivotal Arizona-for-Biden call in 2020. Now, with a single interview, he seemed to be thrust back into Fourth Estate stardom, a veritable It Boy of journalism. At the very least, he was off the hook. “Hot for Bret Baier,” tweeted Brooke Hammerling, the veteran member of the tech-and-media P.R. in-crowd. “Never thought I’d say those words but wow. A masterclass in how to do an interview.”