Fox News’ Chris Wallace on Joe Biden Address to Congress: ‘This is Going to be a Popular Speech with the American Public’

Fox News anchor Chris Wallace praised President Joe Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress in perhaps the only way that matters, telling his colleagues that in his view, “This is going to be a popular speech with the American public.”

Following Brit Hume’s negative analysis of President Biden’s speech, anchor Bret Baier asked Wallace for his take on Biden’s speech, which is the equivalent of a state of the union address. Well, he didn’t ask so much as prompt.

“Chris Wallace, senator for 36 years, Joe Biden was, vice president for 8. He sat up there at that rostrum numerous times behind President Obama with the facial recognition of what he was saying. He’s been through arguably more of these speeches than many in that building, and yet tonight he was the spotlight,” Baier said, then after a few seconds of silence, added “Chris?”

Wallace offered an analysis that was equal parts praise and elegy for Reagan-era disdain for government:

You know, I think this is going to be a popular speech with the American public. He offered a lot of stuff. Four trillion dollars will buy a lot of stuff, from millions of jobs to child care to community health centers, all kinds of stuff, community colleges.

And the other thing that’s pretty popular is, he said you’re not going to have to pay for it. Big corporations are going to pay for it, people making more than $400,000 are going to pay for it, but the vast majority of people watching tonight aren’t. So offering a lot of stuff and saying you aren’t going to have to pay for it is pretty popular.

And I think they’ve made a calculation that after Covid, that people have come to have a different feeling about government, that they now feel more trusting and more the need of government, and so where this might have turned a lot of people off, and probably still will, they believe the majority of people are going to say, you know, the government’s here and it’s here to help you.

That closing line is a riff on a favorite Reagan quote among conservatives.

Watch above via Fox News.