Chris Wallace Criticizes ‘the Fetterman Standard’ and Retirement of Senate Dress Code: ‘It’s a Slippery Slope’
CNN anchor Chris Wallace criticized Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) decision to drop the Senate dress code in response to Sen. John Fetterman’s (D-PA) habit of wearing basketball shorts and a hoodie in the Senate on Wednesday.
On CNN Primetime, Wednesday, host Abby Phillip reported that “all but three Republican senators have now published a letter to the Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer, criticizing his decision there to relax the chamber’s dress code,” which has been criticized as a “response to Senator John Fetterman’s preference for wearing shorts and a hoodie.”
After Phillip asked Wallace for his thoughts on the debate, Wallace responded:
Well you’re asking the wrong guy ’cause, as you know seeing me in the halls, I wear a tie and jacket to work every day. Maybe not Saturdays, but almost all the time. Look, maybe there’s some bending, I know that business casual has become the fashion or whatever, but really? In the United States Senate, a hoodie and shorts and sneakers? You know, I’m not easily offended, and I mean, if they’re going to go on this way it’s not the end of the republic, but gee, it does seem to me that saying that Fetterman can dress like that— then you’ve had Susan Collins, a very proper Republican senator from Maine, saying maybe she’ll wear a bikini. I actually think that, you know, if it was a question of signing on the line about we need to have some kind of dress code that’s a little better than the Fetterman standard, I probably would have signed.
Phillip argued, “Let’s be honest, I mean, when it comes to decorum, I don’t think the dress code is the problem over on Capitol Hill. This has been a pretty rowdy Congress if you ask me,” before asking, “I mean, is this just kind of making hay out of something that doesn’t really matter all that must have?”
Wallace replied, “When you start with the tie, it’s a slippery slope. I don’t know where it goes from there.”
Fetterman has received heavy criticism from Republicans over his decision to wear casual clothing on the Senate floor.
On Tuesday, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee argued Fetterman’s clothing made him look like “a junior high gamer,” before calling on Fetterman “to put his big boy pants on and realize he ran for the U.S. Senate, not for student council in the seventh grade.”
Fetterman, meanwhile, has dismissed the criticism, arguing there are “more important things we should be talking about” than “if I dress like a slob.”
Watch above via CNN.
