Media

Fox’s Bret Baier: ‘Hyperbolic’ and ‘insulting’ of VP Harris to compare Jan. 6 to 9/11

by Dominick Mastrangelo - 01/06/22 2:19 PM ET

Fox News anchor Bret Baier said he would not be surprised to see families of the 9/11 terrorist attacks express outrage at comments from Vice President Harris on Thursday comparing those attacks to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

“I don’t think we’ve hit on it hard enough. The fact that the vice president conveyed that Jan. 6, 2021, was like Dec. 7, 1941, and Sept. 11, 2001. Even for some people who are going to condemn the attacks and the riot and they’re going to find that, I think, pretty hyperbolic, and for 9/11 family survivors maybe insulting,” Baier said during his analysis of speeches given by the president and vice president on Thursday.

“We may see that backlash. And the other thing is the president going specifically numerous times to defeated, beaten, talking about failed, lost. It was almost that he was trying to stir former President Trump into saying something today, and we’ll see if that happens,” Baier continued.

During her remarks before President Biden, Harris said Jan. 6 will be one of “certain dates [that] echo throughout history, including dates that instantly remind all who have lived through them — where they were and what they were doing when our democracy came under assault.”

“Dates that occupy not only a place on our calendars, but a place in our collective memory. December 7th, 1941. September 11th, 2001. And January 6th, 2021,” she said. “On that day, I was not only vice president-elect, I was also a United States senator. And I was here at the Capitol that morning, at a classified hearing with fellow members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Hours later, the gates of the Capitol were breached.”

During his pointed remarks, Biden blamed former President Trump and his Republican allies for the siege, saying their false assertions about the integrity of the 2020 presidential election led to the violence that broke out at the Capitol that day.

“The former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election. He has done so because he values power over principle, because he sees his own interest as more important than his country’s interest, America’s interest, and because his bruised ego means more to him than our democracy and our Constitution,” Biden said. “He can’t accept he lost.”

As Baier predicted, Trump issued several statements following Biden’s speech, repeating the false claim the the election had been “rigged” against him and accusing the president of trying to “distract” the American people.

“This political theater is all just a distraction for the fact Biden has completely and totally failed,” Trump said, before adding that Biden had “used my name today to try to further divide America.”