Fox News anchor Chris Wallace didn’t come right out and criticize his Trump-toady colleagues but judging by what he didn’t say, his opinion was crystal clear.
A surprise for me in yesterday’s New York Times profile of Wallace is that he is a registered Democrat. The Washington Post apparently outed him in 2006:
"The reason I'm a registered Democrat is that in Washington, D.C., there is really only one party," Wallace told us yesterday. "If you want a say in who's going to be the next mayor or councilman, you have to vote in the Democratic primary." (No offense intended, we're sure, to GOP D.C. Council rep Carol Schwartz or independent David Catania , who was first elected as a Republican.)
Wallace is a regular at his local polling place, and says he's voted for members of both parties.
Putting Wallace’s party affiliation and voting record aside, we’ve certainly caught him sounding more like a Republican mouthpiece than a Democrat.
But there’s no denying he’s often been a voice of reason during the Trump era.
However, there is an unmistakeable disconnect between Wallace and the Trump lickspittles at Fox. Less than a week after Wallace reported on his deep dive into mail-in voting that totally contradicted Trump’s claims about voter fraud, Fox & Friends ignored Wallace’s findings and helped validate Trump’s falsehoods, e.g.
So while I would not expect Wallace to lavish compliments on the sycophants, I was surprised he didn’t even go so far as faint praise. From the Times interview:
Mr. Wallace has occasionally needled his Fox News colleagues, including an on-camera rebuke to the hosts of “Fox & Friends” in 2008 for their carping coverage of Mr. Obama. But in interviews, he repeatedly demurred when pressed about his comfort level with Fox News’s pro-Trump prime-time.
“Why would anyone want to parade what they think about their colleagues in public?” he said, adding: “I’m responsible for myself.”
“If Donald Trump loses and Joe Biden is elected in November, Fox News will go on,” Mr. Wallace said. “The Trump era will be over, but Fox News will go on and the opinion side will push other issues and other people.”
But is the Fox News brand now too closely associated with Trump?
“The president doesn’t seem to think so,” Mr. Wallace replied. “He’s pretty critical of Fox. He’s certainly critical of me.”
Got it.
(Wallace image via screen grab)