Bret Baier’s New Book About 1876 Actually Starts With Last Year’s Jan. 6 Attacks
What's Bret Baier’s net worth? Learn more about the Fox News anchor and host of "Special Report," and his salary, career, and books.
Feb. 9 2022, Published 5:52 a.m. ET
Viewers of Fox News know Bret Baier as the anchor of Special Report, which the channel touts is the highest-rated cable news program in its timeslot, weeknights at 6 p.m. ET. But Baier—who has a net worth of $20 million and a salary of $7 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth — has other claims to fame, too.
Bret Baier
Anchor of Fox News program "Special Report"
Net worth: $20 million (reported)
Bret Baier is the anchor and executive editor of the weeknight Fox News program Special Report, and he’s the channel’s chief political anchor. He’s also the author of books, including To Rescue the Republic: Ulysses S. Grant, The Fragile Union, and the Crisis of 1876.
Birthdate: Aug. 4, 1970
Hometown: Rumson, N.J.
Education: B.A. in political science and English, DePauw University
Spouse: Amy Baier (m. 2004)
Children: Paul (b. 2007), Daniel (b. 2010)
For starters, Baier is the author of historical tomes, including To Rescue the Republic and Three Days in January. He’s also a golfer who competed as one of the celebrities at the 2022 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in Feb. 2022, alongside actor Bill Murray and rappers Macklemore and Schoolboy Q. Here’s more about Baier’s life and career.
Brett Baier joined Fox News in 1998 after working for local newsrooms
After graduating from DePauw University, in Greencastle, Ind., with a B.A. in political science and English, Baier worked for WRAL-TV (CBS 5) in Raleigh, N.C., WREX-TV (NBC 13) in Rockford, Ill., and WJWJ-TV (PBS 2) in Beaufort, S.C., according to his Fox News bio. He joined Fox News in 1998, serving as the channel’s southeastern correspondent from 1998 to 2001 and ranking as its first reporter in its Atlanta bureau.
As Baier’s career progressed, he became national security correspondent for Fox News and then, in 2006, the channel’s chief White House correspondent. And in 2009, he took over Special Report after anchor Brit Hume departed the show.
He’s a published author whose latest book, "To Rescue the Republic," hit shelves in Oct. 2021
Baier is the author of five books. In Special Heart: A Journey of Faith, Hope, Courage and Love, he recounts his son Paul’s health battle. Then, Baier turned to history for Three Days in January: Dwight Eisenhower's Final Mission, Three Days in Moscow: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of the Soviet Empire, and Three Days at the Brink: FDR's Daring Gamble to Win World War II.
And in Oct. 2021, Baier released To Rescue the Republic: Ulysses S. Grant, The Fragile Union, and the Crisis of 1876, which “illuminates the life of one of America’s most consequential yet misunderstood leaders,” according to its synopsis. In a recent Washington Post Live interview, Baier explained why he opens To Rescue the Republic with the events of Jan. 6, 2021. As he said in the interview, the attack on the Capitol—what he called a “really dark day”—came as he was finishing the book.
“I thought I’d start the book like that because it was something that everybody was fresh in their mind about how concerning it was,” he added. “But if you take that and you multiply it by exponentially, our country at that time in 1876 was on the brink of tipping back to a Civil War, and Grant’s presidency is part of the reason that it doesn’t, because of his effort with a grand bargain. … It’s leadership that took us out of that dark time back then.”