Chris Wallace bluntly mentioned he had sufficient with Fox News’ “conspiracy” and “lies,” so he left for CNN in 2021. (Watch the video beneath.)
In a Mediaite interview released Tuesday, the longtime anchor defined how he reached the tipping level on the conservative information channel after 18 years there.
Wallace mentioned a “firewall” between Fox News anchors and its opinionated personalities crumbled through the 2020 presidential election. The community’s calling of Arizona, a swing state, in Joe Biden’s favor and the next backlash and viewer defection it suffered modified the tradition, he mentioned.
The erosion continued as Fox News downplayed the Jan. 6 Capitol assault after amplifying Donald Trump and his allies’ false claims that the election was stolen.
“I saw a poll that said that 70% of Republicans did not think that Joe Biden is the legitimate president,” Wallace mentioned. “That’s horrifying. When you talk about why did you leave and why was it unsustainable? I had no problem with conservative opinion any more than I do with liberal opinion. But what I do have a problem with is conspiracy, lies. The truth is non-negotiable. It’s not something that you can sit there and shade or in any way play with. And I saw way too much of that happening.”
Wallace, who was selling his new ebook, “Countdown 1960: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of the 312 Days that Changed America’s Politics Forever,” additionally expressed no sympathy in any respect for his previous community having to dish out $787 million to Dominion to settle a lawsuit after Fox News fraudulently claimed the corporate’s balloting machines had been rigged towards Trump.
“I viewed it as I’m glad to see that somebody is paying for playing with the truth,” he mentioned. “And for very much breaking what I think is our almost sacred charter, which is to inform people, not to misinform people. To the degree that Fox was scared by the cost of calling Arizona correctly and people going to other more conservative outlets, there’s also a cost to lying and to misrepresenting. And I was happy to see that cost was being exacted.”
Fast-forward to 21:10 for a lot of of Wallace’s feedback about his Fox News tenure:
Wallace gave a extra diplomatic tackle his exit to The New York Times in 2022.
“I just no longer felt comfortable with the programming at Fox,” he mentioned.
“When people start to question the truth — Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurrection? — I found that unsustainable,” he added.
