Memo to Donald Trump: When a Fox News host pummels you over your lies and tactics, as Chris Wallace did today, that’s as much of a political shot over the bow as your attacks on the media.

Wallace got right to it during his 14-minute interview with Trump Chief of Staff Reince Priebus today.  Wallace refused to be deterred in his grilling and Priebus’ answers did not help his cause (transcript excerpts via FoxNews.com):

WALLACE: Reince, President Trump said in his inaugural address said that every decision he makes will be to benefit American families.  How does arguing about crowd size do that?

PRIEBUS:  Because it’s really not about crowd size.  What it’s about is honesty in the media.  What it’s about from day one after winning this election, and President Trump talking about bringing America together, having a unified American public around unified ideas, not Republican or Democrat, he’s ready to get to work.  However, the media, from day one, has been talking about delegitimizing the election, talking about the Russians, talking about everything you can imagine, except the fact that we need to move this country forward.  

Priebus continued by trying to delegitimize the media over a false – and quickly corrected - report that Trump had removed the bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. out of the Oval Office. Then Priebus conflated that with the New York Times showing “all of this white space” during the inauguration and went back to accusing the press of trying to “delegitimize this president in one day." He added ominously, "and we’re not going to sit around and take it.”

But Wallace was not going to “sit around and take it” either.

WALLACE:  OK, you talk about honesty and say that this was about honesty.  Well, there’s another issue here, though, Reince, and that is the president’s honesty, because two things that he said yesterday were just flat wrong, and I want to talk about them.  

First, crowd size.  I’m going to put up, take a look at these pictures.  We’ve got monitors here.

PRIEBUS:  But there’s another picture.

WALLACE:  Wait, let’s take—take a look at those pictures.  On the left, you’ve got the Obama inaugural crowd.  On the right, you’ve got the Trump inaugural crowd.  Which one is bigger?  

PRIEBUS:  Listen, you are also not saying that that picture was taken before he was even speaking.  I mean, you can—

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE:  I was there.  I was there in the Mall.

PRIEBUS:  I was there, too, Chris.

WALLACE:  Let me say, first of all, I think this is a ridiculous conversation.

PRIEBUS:  Right.

WALLACE:  But there were huge areas—he said that there were crowds all the way to the Washington Monument.  

PRIEBUS:  There was.  Yes, there was.  I was sitting there --  

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE:  Look, I mean, put up the picture again.  

(CROSSTALK)

PRIEBUS:  You can keep putting the picture, but I can take a picture—an aerial picture right now and I can say look at the difference.  If you’re not comparing apples to apples, it doesn’t matter.  

WALLACE:  I’m telling you, that there were huge --  

PRIEBUS:  You can keep telling me what you want to tell me.  

WALLACE:  All right.  Let me --  

PRIEBUS:  The point is, is that instead of talking about the substance of what President Trump actually said—

WALLACE:  You’re the ones who did.  He could have given --  

(CROSSTALK)

PRIEBUS:  No, we then do it.

WALLACE:  Wait a minute, he could have given a news conference yesterday, talked about the agenda, talked about the signing, the executive actions he’s going to sign, his legislative agenda.  He talks about crowd size.  Let me ask you about one—

PRIEBUS:  Wait a minute, wait a minute.  Let’s back up.  We didn’t tweet out that MLK Jr.’s bust was removed from the Oval Office.  We didn’t—

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE:  Wait a minute, the reporter made a mistake, he apologized.  And Spicer sent him a tweet back saying “apology accepted”.  

PRIEBUS:  Right, so these are the mistakes that are made.  A reporter shoots first, aims later.  I think the magnitude—

WALLACE:  Are you saying there’s a conspiracy here?  

PRIEBUS:  I’m saying there’s an obsession by the media to delegitimize this president, and we are not going to sit around and let it happen.  We’re going to fight back tooth and nail every day, and twice on Sunday.  

But Wallace was not done. He went on to confront Priebus over Trump’s lies at the CIA:

WALLACE: Mr. Trump said that the CIA talked of the feud between him and the intelligence community was a media invention.  

Reince, it was Donald Trump at his news conference in New York who compared what the leaking of the Russia dossier, said it was the intelligence community who had done it, it was disgraced, and compared it to Nazi Germany.  That was not a media invention.  

PRIEBUS:  We don’t know who leaked the documents, Chris.  

WALLACE: But wait a minute.  That’s beside the point.  Mr. Trump said, he compared it to Nazi Germany.  

PRIEBUS:  Listen, someone leaked the document, some leaked the document, and you don’t know if it wasn’t someone in the intelligence community.  But some bad actor—the point is this, one bad actor in the intelligence community doesn’t taint President Trump’s view of the entire intelligence community.  I was there yesterday.  I’m telling you, it was a love fest if you are in the room.  

These are men and women that President Trump loves and respects, and the reason he went there first was to tell them I don’t want you to believe the media, that I don’t respect you all as intelligence officers.  

WALLACE:  It’s not the media.  It’s what he’s saying.  [...] [T]he point is, it was Mr. Trump who’s compared it to Nazi Germany ... It’s not Nazi Germany.

PRIEBUS:  Well, it’s something that’s pretty rotten.  

WALLACE:  I agree to that.  

PRIEBUS:  OK.  Well, good.

Fox is not one to shy away from accusing the media of anti-Republican bias. It's also very unlikely that a host would spend so much time criticizing a Republican, much less a Republican president, out of a sense of scruples. For one thing, Wallace almost certainly had the approval of his producer. For another, this interview had a rather narrow focus of Trump's un-presidential behavior. You'll notice that he conveniently refrained from mentioning Trump's historic unpopularity nor the groundswell of opposition to him as demonstrated in the Women's March on Washington and around the country and the world yesterday. So, in my opinion, this was a message to the Trump camp. Whether Trump will heed the message remains to be seen.

Watch the exchange below, from the January 22, 2017 Fox News Sunday, and let me know what you think. And stay tuned because Wallace was not done on the subject. I’ll have another post about how he revisited it later in the show.

UPDATE: As I wrote below, I believe Wallace's motive was more in the way of a friendly scolding than oppositional. I also thought Wallace was sending a message from Fox, not merely acting on his own conscience or news instincts. I was further convinced by a later panel discussion on the same show. Also, these comments that Mediaite caught.