Bret Baier was in the process of setting up an interview with Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela when he and his wife were captured by the United States, the Fox News anchor told “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Saturday. Things were on pause because Maduro expressed concerns about security, and “then this came to pass.”
“The Mexican president, the Colombian president … I think all of those leaders have to be looking over their shoulder as far as what that means, and where this goes, and tying to the drug cartels,” Baier said in a clip shared online. “That’s the ultimate threat here, the drug cartels, and the use of different cartels to funnel drugs into the U.S., thereby making a case against these leaders.”
He continued, “I will tell you something here that I was not going to say — We were contacted through intermediaries to have potentially an interview with Nicolás Maduro in recent weeks. We were in the process of having back-channel communications. They wanted me to come to Caracas. It was not feasible; they couldn’t make a decision. He was worried about security. I was talking to the US about the possibilities, then this came to pass.”
“Obviously Nicolás Maduro saw that this was coming. You saw the video of him in the car doing an interview with the Spanish channel saying, ‘I’ll give the U.S. whatever they want’. He knew this was transpiring. My wife was not into me going to to Caracas either, but I was ready to go,” Baier concluded.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Baier described the capture of Maduro as “remarkable.” As he put it, “It has been telegraphed that something like this may have been in the works for some time.”
Trump announced the US had apprehended Maduro and his wife early Saturday morning. In a brief interview, Trump told the New York Times “it was a brilliant operation” and that “a lot of good planning” went into it.
