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On Wednesday, nearly one-dozen Republican candidates for president will be packed onto a stage in downtown Milwaukee for the first officially sanctioned Republican National Committee (RNC) debate of the 2024 presidential election.
Hosted by Fox News hosts Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, the debate will be the first opportunity the country will have to evaluate the GOP candidates for the nomination side-by-side in an election cycle in which most of the field is already ideologically aligned, and separated by only a handful of issues like abortion and U.S. foreign policy. However, it's also an opportunity for the candidates to offer their own unique vision for the presidency, and state their case for a return to conservative governance after four years of President Joe Biden.
But the crowded field will have to do so under the pace set by Baier and MacCallum, two seasoned pundits who rank at the top of the conservative news networks' journalistic pecking order.
Baier, the network's former chief White House and Pentagon correspondent, has one of the Fox News roster's longest and most decorated resumes dating back to his coverage of the September 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon.
An anchor for the network since 2009, Baier has led some of the network's most high-profile interviews over the years, culminating in a highly contentious interview with former President Donald Trump in June that helped fuel a public rift between Trump and the network that helped elevate him to the presidency in 2016.
Baier also represents a change of pace from former Fox News host Chris Wallace who was often left pleading with Trump and Biden to get a word in as they sparred in a war of words during Fox News' last hosted debate in 2020.
Baier will be joined on the debate stage by MacCallum, a seasoned veteran journalist and two-decade employee of the network whose list of longform interviews includes figures from former President Barack Obama and 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former first lady Laura Bush.
MacCallum's most notable performance with Fox News may have been her much-lauded 2018 interview with then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh over allegations of sexual impropriety during his high school and college drinking days, including pointed questions on when he lost his virginity, whether he had been a participant in gang rape, and whether he would be receptive to an FBI inquiry into those allegations.
"We are extremely proud to have Bret and Martha moderating the first debate of the 2024 presidential election season as Americans learn more about the candidates ahead of exercising their constitutional right to vote," FOX News Media President and Executive Editor Jay Wallace said in a statement earlier this year after the debate was announced.
Fox News referred Newsweek to the same statement when reached for comment.
About the writer
Nick Reynolds is a senior politics reporter at Newsweek. A native of Central New York, he previously worked as a ... Read more