Fox’s Wallace Blows Through Break to Keep Dragging Mulvaney for Saying Plan to Hide USS McCain From Trump No Biggie
Fox News host Chris Wallace blew through part of a commercial break to grill White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney about the decision to keep a ship named in honor of late Senator John McCain out of sight during Trump’s visit to Japan this week.
On this week’s edition of Fox News Sunday, Wallace concluded his interview with Mulvaney by informing him he had 30 seconds left to talk about the McCain story, but then blew past that mark to push back on Mulvaney’s response.
“Finally, during the president’s trip to, actually before he went to Japan, the White House military office sent this email to the Navy,” Wallace said, and read the subject line of a White House email that read “USS John McCain needs to be out of sight.”
He also played Trump’s comments denying he know of the plan, but calling it “well-meaning.”
“What did the president mean, it was well meaning, and second, have you, as White House Chief of staff, determined how it was that somebody in the military office in the White House decided it would be a good idea to hide the ship that is in honor of an American war hero?” Wallace asked.
“All right in the 15 seconds you left me out of your 30, the president didn’t know about it, I didn’t know about it, look, literally hundreds of people are involved in moving the president overseas,” Mulvaney said. “The president’s feelings about the former senator are well-known, the fact that a low-level person might have asked the question shouldn’t surprise anybody. We think it’s much ado about nothing.”
“Will somebody in the White House be disciplined?” Wallace asked.
“For, for what?” Mulvaney spat. “For asking an innocuous question about that? No, does someone get disciplined at Fox News for saying that so and so doesn’t want to sit next to so and so at a meeting? No, again, this is a minor issue that we think the media is trying to make it to a larger matter.”
“Well, let me just say, to pursue it, that the Pentagon chief, Shanahan, had his chief of staff call the White House to say that the Pentagon must not be politicized, so apparently Patrick Shanahan doesn’t think it’s a minor idea,” Wallace said.
“But again, nothing happened because of it,” Mulvaney said, contrary to extensive reporting. “Someone asked a question during the preparation for a trip. Again, if you understood how many people were involved in this, you understand the number of folks you could have asked this question, and if a 23 or 24-year-old person says look, is it really a good idea for this ship to be in the background, that is not an unreasonable question to have, and, and it certainly not something that takes up two minutes of national television on Sunday.”
Watch the clip above, via Fox.
