On Thursday, Bret Baier entered enemy territory at The View.

“Enemy” because of his conservatism and their liberalism? No. Rather, because the women at The View regularly characterize Fox News as…

The anchor guested in order to promote Three Days in Moscow, his new book about Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. During his time in the lion’s den, the girls asked him about being part of the President’s in-the-pocket network, as well as a favorite topic lately for the roundtable cluckers: a White House aide’s recent insult of John McCain.

On May 10th, Kelly Sadler dismissed McCain’s opposition to Gina Haspel as CIA Director because “he’s dying anyway.” The White House hasn’t offered an official apology, so the liberal ladies inquired as to whether Bret thought Team Trump was in error. Whoopi Goldberg posed, as if by nature of his position at Fox, perhaps Baier was a spokesperson for the President:

“We have lots of young people who watch your network who are taking a page out of that book. Does it bother you that we can’t seem to just say, ‘I’m sorry, I made a mistake?'”

“Yes,” Bret replied, additionally explaining he didn’t work for Trump, “and I cover all of this. If you watch my show, you know, some of the loudest critics of Fox don’t watch my show. We’re on the news side and there’s an opinion side.”

Virulently anti-Trump Joy Behar asked if it’s a “dangerous time for the news.” Oh, and also:

“If Trump keeps lying — he’s up to nine a day…his base doesn’t know what is the truth and what isn’t the truth because they believe what he says.”

Nice. In other words, his base is stoopid.

Brett explained the situation to Behar:

“From their point of view, they say the Resistance is going over the top and lying about X, Y, and Z, so you have to call facts facts, and I agree with you.”

Of course, part of that Resistance is The View.

Sunny Hostin, a former legal analyst for CNN, asked:

“People do see Fox News as the administration’s mouthpiece. I don’t know if it helped that it’s been reported that your colleague Sean Hannity talks to the president nightly before bed, about the day’s musings. Do you think that’s appropriate? I understand Sean is on the opinion side of the network. But as a representative of the network, that Sean is, is that appropriate?”

Hostin, it would seem, might liken Fox’s relationship with Trump to CNN’s relationship with Obama. Somehow, she failed to do so.

Baier attempted again an explanation of the difference between opinion and news at his network:

“First of all, the network overall is not a mouthpiece. There may be opinion shows that have a direct relationship with the President, and Sean is not calling me and giving me a download of the call.”

Bret Baier on The View isn’t the most comfortable thing in the world to watch. Surely it was no less cringeworthy for him. He was swimming with sharks, but thanks to his professionalism, he held tight to the chainsaw of kept coolness:

Check out my coverage of how MSNBC handled Kelly Sadler’s John McCain comment.

For more madness on The View, here’s my article from last week.

And, as always, follow Alex Parker on Twitter.