Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier flies to Cleveland next week, where he will moderate the first Republican presidential debate, with Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace. The three have been meeting daily to consider questions–and ponder how to handle the frontrunner, Donald Trump.
“If anybody would have told you six months ago that Donald Trump would be leading pretty much every national poll heading into the first debate, you probably could have made a lot of money in Vegas,” Baier told CleveScene.
Trump, like the other candidates on stage, will be held to the same rules Fox News used four years ago: respond to the question, 30 seconds for a follow-up, and if another candidate is mentioned, they get 30 seconds to respond to that. “Have we talked about what we do if Trump just decides to play by his own rules? Yeah,” Wallace tells the Akron Beacon Journal. My basic strategy would be, if I’m questioning, is to appeal to the idea that we have rules and the other candidates are abiding by them.”
Bayer doesn’t know if Trump will stick to the time limits, but he’s confident of one thing: Trump’s popularity is significant:
Is Donald Trump a phenomenon of the new age? I mean, I’ll just cut to the chase here. Part of his success is due to a real visceral anger about politicians on both sides of the aisle. People in Washington: They’re just not getting stuff done. According to the polls, many people feel that way. They’re just mad, and that’s part of his traction. Is the media and the Internet and the social media, does it fuel some of that? I think that’s definitely the case. We’ll see how this campaign unfolds. I think it will be different than any other that we’ve seen.