page_title: Bret Baier
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Bret Baier / Career
caption_attribution_description: Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo participates in an interview with Bret Baier of Fox News, at the Department of State, on March 2, 2020. [State Department photo by Freddie Everett/ Public Domain]
context_page_description: William Bret Baier is the host of Special Report with Bret Baier on the Fox News Channel and the chief political correspondent for Fox. He previously worked as the network's Chief White House Correspondent and Pentagon correspondent.
context_section_description: Baier began his television career with a local station in Rockford, Illinois, before joining WRAL-TV, then CBS now NBC affiliate (As of February 29, 2016) in Raleigh, North Carolina. He sent an audition tape to Fox News in 1998, and was hired as the network's Atlanta bureau chief. On September 11, 2001, he drove from Georgia to Arlington, Virginia, to cover the attack on the Pentagon. He never returned to the Atlanta bureau and was instead tapped as the network's Pentagon correspondent, remaining at the post for five years and taking 11 trips to Afghanistan and 13 trips to Iraq.
  He was named Fox News's White House correspondent in 2007, covering the administration of George W. Bush. In the fall of 2007, he began substituting for Brit Hume, then the anchor of Special Report, on Fridays.
  On December 23, 2008, Brit Hume anchored his final show and announced Baier would replace him as anchor of Special Report. He hosted his first show as permanent anchor on January 5, 2009.
  A Freedom of Information Act request filed to investigate anti-Fox News bias in the Barack Obama administration revealed an internal email written by Deputy White House Communications Director, Jen Psaki, dated October 23, 2009, that referred to Baier as a "lunatic." Psaki, who sent the email, later apologized to Baier.
caption: Baier (right) with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2020
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