Chris Wallace Rejects Steve Bannon’s Claim Fox News Cut ‘Embarrassing’ Portion of Trump Interview
Chris Wallace rejected a claim made by former White House advisor Steve Bannon that the Fox News anchor edited out an “embarrassing” portion of an interview with Donald Trump.
A summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s interview with Bannon was released this week as part of a FOIA request from BuzzFeed News. The outlet obtained a trove of witness interview documents from the investigation, including the interview with Bannon who spoke about an interview president-elect Trump gave to Wallace in December of 2016.
“After the meeting with [Barack] Obama, Trump attended the Army-Navy football game,” reads the summary. “He did an interview with Chris Wallace that weekend. Wallace brought up [Michael] Flynn’s son’s tweets, which Trump had not heard about. It was embarrassing for Trump, and Fox agreed to cut out that part of the interview.”
A screenshot of the interview summary:
It is not unusual for pre-taped interviews to be edited for time. Nor would it be surprising for a pro-Trump opinion host to feature only the most flattering content of their subject. Chris Wallace, however, is considered among the top journalists in the business and known as a stickler, so this assertion certainly raised our eyebrows.
Mediaite asked Wallace about the claim. In a phone call on Tuesday, he made plain that Bannon’s account of what happened that day is “off base.” Wallace explained that the interview conducted in two parts — first at the Trump Tower and then on his private airplane “Trump Force One” — was substantive and made a lot of news. Wallace asked about CIA reports that Russia had tried to sway the election in Trump’s favor, and about his cutting ties with private businesses.
Wallace told Mediaite that toward the end of the first part of the interview at Trump Tower, he asked Trump about the fact that his transition team had just that week fired Michael Flynn Jr., the son of the National Security Adviser, for spreading fake stories about Hillary Clinton and Pizzagate.
“He said he didn’t know anything about it and [said] he’d look into it,” Wallace explained. “So I immediately thought, I’m not getting anything out if it, but like a lot of questions that you ask that didn’t go anywhere, I’m not going to use it. And I never intended to use the exchange later on.”
Wallace did note that while on the airplane, Trump asked that not air. He said it might be personally embarrassing to his National Security Adviser.
According to Wallace, Trump said, “I think that’s going to embarrass the General. Would you mind taking that out of the interview?”
Wallace said that given that exchange made no news and that he “never intended to use it anyway, I said that it would not.”
The Fox anchor made clear that if the portion had made news — he would have run it.
“That’s what happened.”
