I never watch Fox-- like never; I don't even know where it is on the dial-- so just assumed they were all a bunch of Nazis like Hannity, Ingraham and Carlson. I was doing a story on corrupt Republican Ken Calvert a decade-plus ago and came across this Fox show hosted by Chris Wallace. I think it was the first time I had ever seen him. And he was slicing and dicing an influential Republican.
At the end of last year, after almost 2 decades with Fox, Wallace suddenly quit the network and took a job with CNN. His shows starts Tuesday on CNN's streaming service. This morning, the NY Times published Wallace's first interview-- albeit a skimpy one meant to promote the new show-- since leaving Fox. He told Michael Grynbaum that he left because he "no longer felt comfortable with the programming at Fox... I’m fine with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion. But when people start to question the truth-- Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurrection?-- I found that unsustainable."
Wallace also acknowledged that he felt a shift at Fox News in the months after Donald J. Trump’s defeat in 2020-- a period when the channel ended its 7 p.m. newscast, fired the political editor who helped project a Trump loss in Arizona on election night and promoted hosts like Mr. Carlson who downplayed the Jan. 6 riot.
He confirmed reports that he was so alarmed by Mr. Carlson’s documentary Patriot Purge-- which falsely suggested the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was a “false flag” operation intended to demonize conservatives-- that he complained directly to Fox News management.
“Before, I found it was an environment in which I could do my job and feel good about my involvement at Fox,” Mr. Wallace said of his time at the network. “And since November of 2020, that just became unsustainable, increasingly unsustainable as time went on.”
Still, he acknowledged that some viewers may wonder why he did not leave earlier.
“Some people might have drawn the line earlier, or at a different point,” he said, adding: “I think Fox has changed over the course of the last year and a half. But I can certainly understand where somebody would say, ‘Gee, you were a slow learner, Chris.’”
Yeah, a very, very, very slow learner. Apparently he's decided to veer away from politics now and he'll be interviewing... Judy Collins for CNN instead of doing shows on folks like Ken Calvert.