Chris Wallace: The Press Has Made a ‘Mistake’ in Taking Trump’s Bait and ‘Playing His Game’

On Thursday night, Fox News anchor Chris Wallace expressed what he believes the press does wrong in covering President Donald Trump.

After condemning Trump’s repeated attacks of calling the media the “enemy of the people,” Wallace told Stephen Colbert that the press also makes errors.

“I do think that the press has made a mistake, in some cases, in taking the president’s bait and overreacting to it and sometimes playing his game,” Wallace explained. “We are not in his game. We shouldn’t fight fire with fire. His job is to be a disruptor and you want to call him whatever you want to call him, our job is to be reporters. And that means being umpires, calling balls and strikes, being fact checkers, pointing out when things are wrong, but we should try and match his invective with our invective.”

Wallace then invoked the front page headline from last Saturday’s issue of The Washington Post that includes how the bomber that was captured was a Trump supporter, and asked Colbert if he thought that should have been in the “lead headline.”

“Um… there’s nothing wrong with it,” Colbert responded.

“But is that the news?” Wallace pushed back.

Wallace and Colbert then got into a heated debate about whether the motive of the bomber was important, something the Fox News anchor thinks it was not.

“It doesn’t matter because he’s a criminal,” Wallace argued. “What would have happened if he were a Democrat? So therefore, Democrats should hang their heads in shame? He was a psychopath!”

“The headline doesn’t say ‘hang your head in shame,’ it describes the person who did it,” Colbert responded. “It doesn’t describe anyone else. It only describes him.”

“I understand, but it’s basically giving the president responsibility for what this nut did,” Wallace doubled down.

Wallace did clarify that he wasn’t suggesting that the Washington Post shouldn’t report that the bomber was a Trump supporter, just no in the headline.

Watch the clip above, via CBS.

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