Fox News‘ Chris Wallace is blaming President Trump for a performance Tuesday night that The Federalist’s Kylee Zempel called the “most embarrassing moderator performance in history.”
Wallace said he initially felt the debate was off to a strong start as the two candidates engaged with each other, but soon realized that interaction was not positive.
“My initial reaction was, ‘This is great’ because so often these debates become parallel news conferences where one candidate answers the question to him, the other candidate answers the question to him,” Wallace says. “So when the president started engaging with Biden, I thought we were gonna have a real debate here.”
“It became clear, and clearer over time that this was something different and that the president was determined to try to butt in or throw Joe Biden off … I saw another Fox analysis that indicates the president interrupted either Biden’s answers or my questions a total of 145 times, which is way more than one a minute. And he bears the primary responsibility for what happened on Tuesday night.”
Wallace took no responsibility for interrupting President Trump many more times than he Biden, nor for failing to ask Joe Biden questions such as whether he condemns the violence perpetrated by groups like Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA the same way he asked President Trump to condemn White supremacy.
Wallace also failed to press Biden on reports he would pack the Supreme Court with liberal judges if he won.
Instead, Wallace faults President Trump’s for ruining the “preparation” Wallace and his team of researchers did.
“And you know, I felt that I had gotten all of the ingredients. I had baked this beautiful, delicious cake and frankly, the president put his foot in it. And that was frustrating, frustrating for me because I tried hard to prepare for a serious debate, [and] much more frustrating, importantly, for the American people because they didn’t get the debate they wanted and that they deserved. And that’s a loss for the country.”
“Hindsight is 20/20,” Wallace added, when responding directly to criticism about his personal performance during the debate.