Exclusive: Fox News’ Bret Baier Opens Up About Teen Son Paul’s Emergency Heart Surgery — “It Changed Me as a Father Forever” 💔❤️‍🩹

Bret Baier enters viewers’ homes every weeknight as the host of Fox News’ Special Report. And over the last few years, he’s brought PEOPLE into a part of his own home life, sharing the story of his 17-year-old son, Paul.

Paul was born with five congenital heart defects and, as Bret has previously explained to PEOPLE, “his heart was essentially pumping the wrong way, and we didn't know before birth.”

Shortly after Paul’s birth on June 29, 2007, he had his first open-heart procedure, then three more at 10 months old, 6 years old and 13 years old.

After his surgery at 13, Paul’s family thought that they would be done with the frightening hospital stays until he was in his 20s. Then in 2024, Paul came down with a common cold and, as a precaution, his mother, Amy, took him to the doctor. He had a chest X-ray, then an MRI. That’s when the family faced another scary diagnosis.

“The MRI comes back, and they sit me down and say, ‘This is a really big deal. This is an aneurysm the size of a golf ball that has formed off of his heart,' ” Bret told PEOPLE at the time. “And they didn't know whether it might burst, but if it did, it might have been fatal in a matter of minutes.”

Yet another open-heart operation followed, this one even more dire than the ones that came before.

“It was exponentially more stressful and emergent, and we weren't prepared for it,” Bret, 54, now recalls in a conversation ahead of Father's Day. “This happened literally within 12 hours…so it was a heavy lift.”

Thankfully, the surgery was successful, and a year later, Paul is doing just fine and thinking about his future.

“The recovery was awesome. The doctors and nurses at Children's National [Hospital, in Washington D.C.], as always, were fantastic,” Bret praises. “And Paul is in the mind space [that] he just plows through it now. And I think, knock on wood, that that's the end of the open heart surgeries.”

“He may have to have little things going forward, angioplasties, which are not little, but it's exponentially less than an open heart surgery,” he adds.

Fox News' chief political correspondent proudly shares that even though his eldest son “missed a lot of school” due to the surgery, he recently finished his junior year of high school and has started to look ahead at colleges.

“Bottom line is, we want him to be a normal kid,” Bret says of his and Amy’s hopes for Paul in the years to come. “Seventeen years ago, we would be really, really happy to be right here — after that first surgery as a baby.”

“While we have in the back of our minds, [that he’s] been through all of this and we're afraid of whatever could happen, we also know that it's better for him to be a normal kid and to be with his friends and to drive when they drive,” he continues.

“He does sports, he's very active, and once we got over that last hurdle last year, it's back to normal, so he's still beating up his little brother and the whole thing.”

Bret and his family — Amy, Paul and 14-year-old Daniel — recently took a trip to the Masters golf tournament, a shared passion as Paul plays on his high school golf team. Next up is an overseas vacation to celebrate the start of summer.

It’ll be a nice break for the reporter, who has interviewed some major political power players already in 2025. He sat down with President Donald Trump just last month, and interviewed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy right after his tense White House meeting with the president in February.

“I think world leader interviews really move the needle, not just here in the U.S. but obviously around the world,” he shares. “I'm really trying to interview President Xi Jinping from China. I've been working on that for a long time, and would love for it to come together.”

Bret also has the latest book in his presidential biography series, To Rescue the American Spirit: Teddy Roosevelt and the Birth of a Superpower, due out on Oct. 21.

With so many balls in the air, the journalist admits that he “rarely” gets a chance to unplug. But when he does, looking at what Paul has been through in just 17 years of life helps him focus on what matters most.

“Everybody has something they're dealing with in their family,” Bret reflects. “This was our something.”

“It gives me perspective about what's important,” he adds. “I fully unplug and plug into my family, put the phone down if I can, and try to make those quality times. We've been through a lot to get there, and now we're trying to enjoy it.”