Chris Wallace Receives Support From Rivals — But Gets Trashed By Some Hosts at His Own Network

Charlie NashSep 30th, 2020, 10:16 am
 

Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images

Fox News anchor Chris Wallace received a mixed response for his moderating of the impossibly chaotic first 2020 presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And while he received some defenses for the performance, he was also trashed by pro-Trump opinion hosts at his own network.

Laura Ingraham — who hosts the top rated prime time show The Ingraham Angle — wrote on Twitter that, “Trump is debating the moderator and Biden,” throwing shade at Wallace without mentioning him by name.

Fox News host Mark Levin also threw shade at Wallace without naming him, arguing Biden “got away with endless lies and cheap shots,” and “went unchallenged by the moderator far too often.”

After conservative commentator Stephen L. Miller tweeted, “Wallace laughing along with Biden isn’t a good look,” The Five co-host Greg Gutfeld replied, “That was not good.”

Gutfeld also called the entire debate “not good,” and retweeted a post from Miller claiming, “Wallace is grilling Trump on his supporters taking to the streets when antifa is burning businesses down right now.”

And during an appearance on Fox & Friends Wednesday, weekend co-host Pete Hegseth defended Trump by claiming Biden “was bailed out a lot” by Wallace.

Perhaps the most interesting Fox News reaction came from Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade who, after predicting that Wallace would be the “best moderator in America,” went on to criticize Wallace’s moderation skills and say the debate looked “like 2 v1 at times” — a tweet he soon deleted.

President Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. made similar remarks following the debate, with Trump tweeting a 2 vs 1 meme and Trump Jr. telling Fox’s Sean Hannity, “We knew that was coming anyway with a Chris Wallace. I understand he’s a Fox guy, but he’s no conservative, and he’s no centrist either.”

Still, some of Wallace’s rivals at other networks came to his defense for moderating 90 minutes of shouting.

ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos said, “I don’t envy the job Chris Wallace had tonight,” while frequent MSNBC guest and strategist James Carville said Wallace should receive “combat pay.”

“We are totally ill-equipped to comment on something like this because there’s nothing in history that informs us to what we just saw. If you look at just the number of times… Chris Wallace should get combat pay,” Carville said. “If you just look at the number of times that he had to chastise Trump, I can’t count it in the back of my mind. This event, nothing like this has ever happened in politics, presidential politics.”

Despite criticizing Wallace, MSNBC’s Morning Joe co-anchor Joe Scarborough said the Fox News anchor “was thrown into the middle of something that no debate moderator has ever been thrown in before, and while it was extraordinarily frustrating, I think all of us need to walk a mile in his shoes before the morning after saying, ‘Well, he could have done this, he could have done that.'”

Some at Fox News did split from their more critical colleagues.

MediaBuzz host Howard Kurtz called Wallace “the best in the business” on air Wednesday, adding “Trump was running against Biden, obviously. He was running against the media. He was also at times seemed to be running against Chris Wallace who kept saying, ‘Let him answer.’”

Fox & Friends weekend co-host Jedediah Bila wrote on Twitter, “Kudos to Chris Wallace for being able to do this tonight while not cursing.”

“Chris Wallace signed up to host a debate on policy. With adults. It shouldn’t be his job to get any grown adult to behave appropriately. Try doing that job without the ability to cut a mic, while having to keep your temper in check. Not so easy,” she added in another tweet.

Geraldo Rivera also defended Wallace: “Criticism of #ChrisWallace misplaced. He signed up to moderate a debate, ending up in middle of a knife fight.”

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