Fox News Sunday discussed Donald Trump’s so-called outreach to African Americans this weekend. But host Chris Wallace, the guy who is supposedly neutral enough to moderate one of the upcoming presidential debates, left out most of Trump’s much longer record of hostility to African Americans, including the recent hire of a white-nationalist supporter to run the Trump campaign.
Before going to an interview with Trump surrogate Dr. Ben Carson, Fox News Sunday made time for a bit of positive coverage about Trump’s visit to an African American church yesterday via Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy:
DOOCY: Trump’s speech that he said was handwritten was very well-received by the several hundred people who heard it and wasn’t just optimistic and forward thinking. It was reflective.
[…]
Detroit native Dr. Ben Carson took Trump on a tour of his old neighborhood not far from the church before the nominee left town. They met with residents, including the woman who now lives in Carson’s old house and the informal visit fit with the pledge Trump made yesterday: to listen and to learn from the people he met here.
Next, Carson told us that Trump “cares deeply” about issues facing African Americans (without offering a single example of his having acted on any of them):
CARSON: He becomes animated during the discussions and this is a subject about which he cares deeply.
And what is going to be accomplished is something that many in the Democratic Party fear, and this is an alternative—an alternative to, you know, promises that are not kept, and look at the situation that’s going on in our inner cities with the school systems. You look at the incarceration rates that are going on, the broken homes, out of wedlock births, the economic situation. This is not good.
Wallace did offer some pushback, by asking "what took him so long" about Trump's visit to the inner city. Wallace also questioned whether Trump is really for “school choice.” But that is almost certainly not a top issue for African Americans in this election.
WALLACE: But let me pick up on that, Dr. Carson. Trump laid out what he called a civil rights agenda for our time—education, safe streets, good jobs.
I want to talk about the first of those. He calls for school choice, but we looked in all of his speeches during this campaign, we looked on his campaign website and nowhere does he explain what means by school choice—how it would work and how he would pay for it.
Wallace also played a clip of Hillary Clinton criticizing Trump’s outreach as ridiculously insensitive and insulting:
HILLARY CLINTON, D-PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: It really does take a lot of nerve to ask people he’s ignored and mistreated for decades, “What do you have to lose?” Because the answer is everything.
But here are some things that Wallace overlooked in Trump’s record that are probably of great significance to African Americans:
- Trump recently made Stephen Bannon, the guy who turned Breitbart News into a voice for the “Alt-right,” as the executive chairman of the Trump campaign.
- Trump has a record of discriminating against African Americans.
- Trump’s protracted and bogus campaign of challenging President Obama’s birth certificate. Even today, Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani refused to say that was a mistake.
- Trump turned down an invitation to speak to the NAACP.
It’s troubling that the sole moderator for the third and final presidential debate, with the freedom to select his own subjects and questions, should overlook these factors in Trump’s outreach.
It’s worth pointing out that even conservatives Brit Hume and George Will, not exactly advocates for African Americans, brought up many of those questions about Trump's record with African Americans in the panel discussion portion of the show. But not Wallace.
I've recently written about why people should be concerned about the choice of Wallace as debate moderator. Watch him interview Carson and Democratic Congressman Gregory Meeks, below, from the September 4 Fox News Sunday, and you'll see the latest reason.
(All transcript excerpts via FoxNews.com.)
Little Chrissie won’t disappoint Jabba the Ailes. He will try to save the election for T-Rump by becoming the most partisan moderator in Presidential debate history. Count on it.
My observation of Chris Wallace is, when he’s outside of the Fox News cocoon, he’s generally only mildly partisan. So when he’s on, say, “Fox & Friends” getting softballed he’ll feed some red meat to the fanboys but when he’s on “Fox News Sunday” he’ll tone it down since it premiers on mainstream Fox to a broader audience before it’s rebroadcast on Fox News cable.
That’s not so say he doesn’t put his thumb on the scale and nobody can forget the abominable ambush interview he did with Bill Clinton some years back.
I expect Wallace will frame his 3rd debate questions to Hillary along the lines of ‘with all due respect, Madam Secretary, but why should we trust you?’ He’ll concentrate on Email-gate, Libya, etc. as much as he can. Whether or not he’ll bring up #Benghazi! is an interesting question because Fox News has been rather quiet on the topic since Hillary absolutely humiliated Trey Gowdy’s committee (which Fox heavily pimped). However, Trump and Fox News have given the mom of a fallen #Benghazi! hero a bunch of attention.
Meanwhile, I expect Chris to frame questions to Trump along the lines of clarifying and providing more detail on various topics he’s been contradictory and vague on. Though, it wouldn’t surprise me if Chris brought up polls showing Trump being untrustworthy so he’ll appear being fair as he isn’t.
The problem for Fox News and Trump is I don’t think Wallace can go but so far in tipping the scales without drawing criticism to himself and The Donald needs a home run to tip the needle – either a brilliant talking point or Hillary making a major gaff. Since Trump brags he won’t prepare much while Hillary will go to great lengths to prepare I can’t see either happening.
Trump’s primary debate performances were him winging it. So he’d make an ass of himself on substance but excite the fanboys on attitude – being un-politically correct. That isn’t going to get Trump past the finish line in November.
“Fox News’ Chris Wallace has no intention of fact checking Trump’s lies during the debates”
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/09/fox-news-chris-wallace-has-no-intention-of-fact-checking-trump-during-the-debates/
The culture of black churches is polite applause 👏 in situations like this and, outside the Fox bubble, it’s how many (except Trump surrogates and reporters normalizing Trump) are describing the audience reaction.
It’s been noted Trump is following the same strategy Roger Ailes advised Nixon to follow. Deliver different messages to different audiences. The problem is this won’t work in the modern information age.
Next week Trump will be screaming to white rednecks the need to sweep dangerous black inner city neighborhoods and crack some heads.
It sucks Wallace will moderate the final and probably most important debate. But the msm is trying to normalize GOPTV™ too.
1. Jabba the Ailes will have advance copies of all of Little Chris’s debate questions.
2. T-Rump’s questions will all be variations of “tell us another way you are going to make American great again.”
3. Hillary’s questions will focus on Benghazi, emails and the Clinton Foundation.
4. T-Rump will be allowed to drone on past his allotted time.
5. Hillary will be interrupted constantly.
6. T-Rump will get the first word and the last word for every topic.