Martha MacCallum reveals the story behind one of her toughest interviews

Martha MacCallum, host of "The Story," told Trey Gowdy about an interview that did not go as expected and gave her take on opinion versus news journalism on "The Trey Gowdy Podcast."

TREY GOWDY: Is there an interview you've done that you think back on and thought, "That did not go the way I had wanted it to go"?

MARTHA MACCALLUM: Well, it's interesting, you know, sometimes you have a lot of time to prepare for an interview, and sometimes you don't. One of those that comes to mind is the morning that I got a phone call in the middle of the Brett Kavanaugh grilling by the Senate. I literally was on my way to work and got a call saying, OK, you just need to reroute that car and get head to D.C. as quickly as you can because you're going to interview Brett Kavanaugh and his wife today. And he hadn't spoken at all about the accusations against him.

At that point, I was very surprised that he was willing to speak out about them. And so I just started scribbling my questions on the way down there and thinking about basically it was just an issue at that point of just getting him on the record to respond to these things that had been said about him, which were uncomfortable things. Asking someone if they were involved in a high school gang rape is not an easy thing to question someone about. So, I mean, I wish I had more time on that one to sort of dig in. But it was, in some ways — it's almost better if you don't sometimes, because the basic mission of what has to happen and what questions need to be answered are pretty clear. So that was interesting.

I also interviewed Justice Gorsuch, who I had hoped to get more from in terms of his thinking, his process. And so I asked him about cases that he had already made decisions on in the hopes that he would be willing to shed some light on why he had — what his thinking was in those decisions, because I knew anything that might come before the bench was not going to be something he would talk about.

But he was very tight-lipped. He didn't want to talk about what the basis was for his decision-making and prior decisions. So that was kind of frustrating. That was a frustrating interview that I was really looking forward to, but didn't go as well as I wanted it to.

GOWDY: If you picked a group that would be the toughest interview in the universe, I can't think of a tougher group than appellate or Supreme Court justices. They're just a tight-lipped, smart, evasive group. I watched your interview with now-Justice Kavanaugh. I did not know how it came about. I just remember thinking this is really rare that a nominee would sit down for an interview, period.

MACCALLUM: They were going through hell at that moment. It would have been, you know — it was he and his wife. And I just will never forget the look on both of their faces. They're trying to save his future. And they clearly felt unjustifiably attacked, and it was really a Hail Mary for them to try to get some of these things on the record and try to turn this aircraft carrier around. And so I just remember the look on their faces. I'll never forget it. A moment in time.

GOWDY: For most of us that are not in the business or don't know that much about the business, we think there's a news side and an opinion side, and that those lanes are really well-marked. Is that true still, in your judgment? Is there some bleeding of opinion into news? I get the question all the time — where do I go for just the news? And it seems like that's a tougher question to answer than maybe it was when you and I work on the wall.

MACCALLUM: Absolutely. I think it's a tougher question to answer … I mean, you look at the world that we live in, right? People splash their opinions all over Twitter all day long, all over Instagram all day long, Facebook all day long. The whole exchange of ideas has changed. So I think that it did used to be more clear.

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I think that to some extent, people's perspective has always kind of shown up in their journalism, even in the most pure form. I think there's always a way to sort of see a little bit of perspective from where a story comes. And I think for each of us, I know what my lane is. 

You know, I am a news person. I like to hear both sides of the story when needed. I'll play devil's advocate with someone that I'm interviewing. And I know the lines that I won't cross personally because that would be a place that would not feel right to me. 

Episodes of "The Trey Gowdy Podcast" are available now and can be downloaded at foxnewspodcasts.com. 

Trey Gowdy currently hosts FOX News Channel’s (FNC) Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy (Sundays, 7PM/ET) and The Trey Gowdy Podcast on FOX News Audio. Mr. Gowdy joined the network as a contributor in January 2019.