Harold Hutchison
Fox News host Harris Faulkner said she knew something was askew before President Donald Trump’s July 31, 2024, interview with a panel during the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) conference when asked about it during an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Trump was interviewed by Faulkner, ABC News reporter Rachel Scott and Semafor reporter Kadia Goba, during which he clashed with Scott over her first question about Trump’s criticism of left-wing members of Congress and former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, and also commented on Vice President Kamala Harris, saying that he “didn’t know she was black” until a few years ago. Faulkner told the DCNF that she saw executives and others debating how to handle the event before Trump took the stage.
“I was backstage when the delay happened for 40 minutes, ‘Oh, we’re having audio problems.’ What I saw backstage were executives from, from some of the, and former executives, from some of the networks and they were working on what they were going to do with Trump, and it did not look positive. And I got to see that firsthand,” Faulkner told the DCNF about the NABJ event.
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“If those people wanted to keep it under wraps, they couldn’t, and they were shouting. And I remember Rachel Scott was part of that whole, you know, melee of people around, I don’t know, it felt like the inner workings of going after Trump,” Faulkner continued. “I thought, ‘Okay, you know what? I’m probably wrong.’ We get on that stage. I wasn’t wrong. What I saw was real, and suddenly a script that, you know, appeared in a prompter in front of the stage that I did not remember anybody talking about.”
Faulkner was modest when the DCNF asked her about her decision to speak out about the way the panel was conducted. “All I did in that moment was call out the truth,” Faulkner told the DCNF about her Aug. 1, 2024, appearance to discuss the forum on “Fox and Friends,” during which she expressed her frustration with the “gotcha moments” during the panel.
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“So much of what America is focused on and so much of what it started with all that emotion and the gotcha moments from the interviewer who was seated directly to his left, has really overtaken the fact that we had an opportunity to talk with the president who walked into a racial storm yesterday,” Faulkner told “Fox and Friends” co-hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade about Scott’s initial question to Trump. “There were journalists, activists, whatever you want to call people who let their politics show who wanted the NABJ to rescind their offer to have the 45th president of the United States come and sit.”
Faulkner also called out Scott for not acknowledging the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt Trump survived during the NABJ panel’s interview with him.
“I mean, it did not take much to show humanity, and in that moment, I was so disappointed that that did not happen,” Faulkner told Doocy, Earhardt and Kilmeade.
In July 2024, when Faulkner was on the panel interviewing Trump for the NABJ event, “The Faulkner Focus” drew 2.1 million viewers on average, according to a Fox News release, with the show’s audience since climbing to 2.3 million, according to Nielsen data provided to the DCNF. Faulkner, though, didn’t think calling out the NABJ forum was what led to her ratings boost, pointing instead to another event.
“I called it out, so I don’t know maybe that was a boost,” Faulkner told the DCNF. “I think really, what was a boost was my sit down on July 13 with the president, four hours before he was shot in public, because he laid out his vision for the country, and when that played in its entirety, even that night after the shooting, there were words in that [NABJ] interview where I said, ‘Why did you pick J.D. Vance for your [vice] president?’ Because, I mean, for your VP, pick, you’ll remember back then… there were some missteps by J.D. Vance in the beginning, and there was some criticism.”
Faulkner told the DCNF she asked about the selection of Vance to get the NABJ panel discussion out of what she called an “ambush lane.”
“That’s why you saw me ask that question at the NABJ, as I kind of rerouted that conversation that was so unfair and said, ‘Can we just get back to journalism here? Can we get out of the ambush lane with Trump?’” Faulkner told the DCNF. “And by the way, you told me you were looking for somebody who could do the job first thing, [you’re] getting a little criticism on J.D. Vance and he, I mean, just as he always does, he knows exactly what he wants.”
“I look at J.D. Vance now as our vice president, he’s given a lot of credit for meeting the moment, every single moment that it comes this way right now in this administration,” Faulkner continued. “So the president knew what he wanted. He got to say it in that moment. And all I did was bring forth the journalism.”
Faulkner has been vocal in her criticism of corporate media outlets’ coverage of Trump since Trump was shot in the right ear while giving a speech at a July 13 campaign rally in Pennsylvania. In one instance, after Democrats refused to applaud when Secret Service Director Sean Curran presented Devarjaye “D.J.” Daniel, who is battling terminal brain cancer, with credentials during Trump’s March 4 speech to a joint session of Congress, Faulkner took aim at Democrats and MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace over their reactions to the address.
“What happened to Nicole Wallace? She was a Republican, she was the comms director for former President [George] W. Bush. She was somebody could see the nation in a nonpartisan way when it called for that from the White House. She could see Americans. What is she looking at right now?” Faulkner asked during the March 5 episode of “Outnumbered.” “She has joined the liberal side of the chamber last night, who I can now call, I mean literally, the largest convention of heart donors living on the planet. Living heart donors!”
NABJ did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.
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