Fox News anchor Chris Wallace sat down for an interview with colleague Bill Hemmer earlier today, where they discussed Tuesday’s presidential debate and the bipartisan criticism of the way he handled it.
Wallace has been criticized by Republicans who say he gave Joe Biden the kid-glove treatment, and by Democrats who say Wallace should have done more to muzzle President Trump.
Right out of the gate, Hemmer asked Wallace about those criticisms. Wallace’s answer was to blame Trump for how the evening went, stating that “at first I thought the President was going to engage in a debate with Biden and let Biden answer so they could go back and forth, [but] that was a misapprehension.”
After claiming he thought it would have been a good idea for Trump to stand back and let Biden talk uninterrupted, so Trump could “pick apart” his answers later, Wallace responded to critics by saying “hindsight is 20/20” and insinuated he would have done things differently had he known what would happen.
But it was when Hemmer brought up the issue of Biden not answering his question about packing the Supreme Court that Wallace began to gaslight on such a level as to make even his critics at CNN proud.
“He answered the question,” Wallace stated, in spite of video evidence to the contrary.
In addition to that false claim, Wallace told Hemmer that it was Trump who set the tone for the night by being the one who started the interruptions:
“Here’s what happened. We began the first segment on the Supreme Court. They each got their 2 minutes and they both obeyed in that particular case,” Wallace told Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer. “And then Biden started to answer a question and the president started interrupting him. My initial reaction was, this is great because so often these debates become parallel news conferences where one candidate answers the question to him, the other candidate answers the question to him. So, when the president started engaging with Biden, I thought we are going to have a real debate here.”
Watch a shortened version of the full interview below:
Chris talked with @HemmerReports today about possible changes from the Commission on Presidential Debates #FoxNews #Debates2020 pic.twitter.com/5cGCUDC73Q
— FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) October 1, 2020
But as people who have rewatched the debate and/or read the actual transcript pointed out, it wasn’t Trump who first started interrupting his opponent when he was talking. It was Biden:
I rewatched the start of the debate. The 1st Q went to Trump who gave an uninterrupted 2-min response. Then Biden gave an uninterrupted 2-min response. Then it went back to Trump, whose answer was interrupted 3 times by Biden. If you didn't like it, blame Biden for starting it.
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) September 30, 2020
In this interview Chris Wallace claimed the President was the first to interrupt. That is definitively false, just like his comments about Critical Race Theory and about Kenosha. https://t.co/8omibbEMzR pic.twitter.com/DaKEpNItjI
— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) October 1, 2020
And as this video clip from the debate clearly shows, Biden did NOT answer the Supreme Court question:
🧵 Thread of Chris Wallace's worst moments from last night's debate:
1) Refusing to push Joe Biden after he refuses to answer whether or not he will pack the court. pic.twitter.com/KMMDJvdX5V
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) September 30, 2020
The transcript of Biden's dodge on court-packing is outrageous.
Chris Wallace had a tough job last night, but letting Biden off the hook on court-packing was a huge mistake.
"I think we've ended this" is not acceptable after Biden's word-salad filibuster non-response. pic.twitter.com/Ap9wnyFNr4
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) September 30, 2020
Trump was the one to act as a moderator, in order to follow-up with Biden and ask him twice again about whether or not he’d pack the Supreme Court.
Chris Wallace ended the segment without pressing Biden for an answer.
Speaks volumes about Wallace’s debate performance, none of it good.
Wallace didn’t do himself any favors with how poorly he handled the debate, and he only made matters worse with this interview.
As I wrote earlier, he’s lost a lot of credibility with people this week after how he conducted the debate, and he has no one to blame but himself for that.
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