Bret Baier Hits Trump With Fact-Check and Abysmal Fox News Poll: ‘Actually…’
Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier fact-checked President Donald Trump’s claim that inflation stood at 1.7% before the Iran war, noting it was “actually closer to 2.4%,” before airing a new poll from the network showing that a whopping 77% of voters disapprove of the president’s handling of the issue.
Baier prefaced the final panel of Wednesday’s edition of Special Report by remarking, “Costs. That’s really what this election has been about. If you look at the polls, higher costs.”
He then pulled up a graphic showing September’s inflation figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which put overall inflation at 3.7%, with energy prices at 20.4%, gasoline at 34.2%, and fuel oil at 74.2%.
“The president earlier said that inflation was at 1.7% before the Iran war. It was actually closer to 2.4%, but it’s at 3.7% now,” Baier stressed. “That leads to this next poll that we have tonight about the president’s performance on inflation, and you see the difference there from January and from March of last year.”
The poll, conducted Oct. 9-12 among registered voters with a margin of error of +/- 2.5 percentage points, found that 77% disapprove of Trump’s handling of inflation, while just 22% approve. That marks a sharp decline from January 2026, when 35% approved and 65% disapproved, and an even steeper drop from March 2025, when 40% approved and 58% disapproved.

Screenshot via Fox News
After hearing from panelist and Wall Street Journal reporter Meridith McGraw, who emphasized that Americans “aren’t buying” the White House’s attempt to “convince” people that “how they feel about the economy is different than what’s really happening,” Baier brought up another recent Fox News poll.
That survey showed 54% of registered voters favoring a Democratic congressional candidate, compared with 45% who preferred a Republican. Among voters who said they were certain to vote, Democrats maintained a six-point advantage, 52% to 46%, with Baier characterizing the results as “clearly in the Democrats’ corner.”
Watch above on Fox News.
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