Chris Wallace Says Working at Fox News Was ‘Unsustainable’ After 2020 Election: I ‘No Longer Felt Comfortable’ With Fox News Programming
Days ahead of the launch of his new show on CNN+,Chris Wallace opened up about his departure from Fox News for the first time — voicing his dissatisfaction with Fox News’ programming, particularly in the final months of his 18-year tenure.
Wallace gave an interview to The New York Times to promote his nightly interview program — Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? — which launches Tuesday. Reflecting on his decision to leave Fox last year, Wallace explained. “I just no longer felt comfortable with the programming at [the network].”
“I’m fine with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion,” he continued, “but when people start to question the truth — Who won the 2020 election? Was January 6 an insurrection? I found that unsustainable. I spent a lot of 2021 looking to see if there was a different place for me to do my job.”
Wallace described the changes he observed in Fox News following the 2020 election. He also confirmed reports from several months ago that he complained to Fox News’ leadership about the conspiracy theories Tucker Carlson was spreading about the storming of the U.S. Capitol.
“Before, I found it was an environment in which I could do my job and feel good about my involvement at Fox,” Wallace said about his time with Fox. “And since November of 2020, that just became unsustainable, increasingly unsustainable as time went on.”
By then, there were changes evident, too, in the Fox News audience — which proved to be less receptive to Wallace’s content than it once was. The anchor’s ratings were down measurably in the final months of his tenure at Fox, and have improved since his departure. Still, he represented a dynamic, credible figure in Fox’s news operation — having hosted presidential debates in the last two elections, among other notable achievements.
Wallace further explained that “I wanted to get out of politics,” and he declined to comment on the latest opinions from Carlson and other Fox News personalities about the situation in Ukraine.
“One of the reasons that I left Fox was because I wanted to put all of that behind me,” he said. “There has not been a moment when I have second-guessed myself about that decision.”
