“No longer TRUSTED the channel” – Chris Wallace QUITS Fox News after 18 years, sparking Heartbreak and Fierce Debate.
Pool/Getty
Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.
In a wide-ranging interview with the New York Times, former Fox News anchor Chris Wallace explained his decision to leave the conservative network last December after 18 years. “Before, I found it was an environment in which I could do my job and feel good about my involvement at Fox,” Wallace told media correspondent Michael Grynbaum. “And since November of 2020, that just became unsustainable, increasingly unsustainable as time went on.”
Wallace brought to Fox News a certain degree of journalistic gravitas throughout his tenure. Moderating presidential debates and hosting the network’s flagship political talk show “Fox News Sunday,” he was considered a more middle-of-the-road presence. Especially in contrast with his colleagues, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, who became more stridently right-wing during the years of Donald Tr::mp’s presidency. “I just no longer felt comfortable with the programming at Fox,” Wallace said in his interview.
“Some people might have drawn the line earlier, or at a different point,” he acknowledged. “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.’”
The 74-year-old anchor did not retire from journalism, however, but instead moved to rival network CNN, where his new daily talk show, “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace?” will debut this coming week. As the Times explains:
But Mr. Wallace also acknowledged that he felt a shift at Fox News in the months after Donald J. Tr::mp’s defeat in 2020—a period when the channel ended its 7 p.m. newscast, fired the political editor who helped project a Tr::mp loss in Arizona on election night and promoted hosts like Mr. Carlson who downplayed the Jan. 6 ri0t.
He confirmed reports that he was so alarmed by Mr. Carlson’s documentary “Patriot Purge” — which falsely suggested the Jan. 6 Capitol ri0t was a “f@lse fl@g” operation intended to demonize conservatives—that he complained directly to Fox News management.
Not that it seemed to have mattered much. “I’m fine with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion,” Wallace said. “But when people start to question the truth—Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurr3cti0n?—I found that unsustainable.”
News
My Parents Humiliated Me at My Father’s Retirement Dinner Then My Husband Revealed Who He Really Was
Chapter 1: The Nobody My name is Diana Parker. I was thirty-two years old when my mother stood in front of 150 people at my father’s retirement party, leaned into a microphone, and made my marriage the punchline of the…
MY MOTHER TOLD ME NOT TO BRING MY SON TO EASTER AGAIN—THEN MY 13-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER STOOD UP AND SAID WHAT NONE OF THE ADULTS WOULD
Chapter 1: Don’t Bring Him It happened at a rented folding table covered in deviled egg crumbs, pastel napkins, plastic forks, and the shiny foil wrappers from Easter chocolate. The April wind moved through the dogwood trees behind my aunt’s…
MY FAMILY USED ME AS AN ATM, Until They Sold My Anniversary Gift and Learned I Was Done Paying
Chapter 1: The Good Daughter The smell of peppermint rinse and sterile latex was the permanent weather of my life. As a dentist, I spent my days working inside the smallest rooms of other people’s fear. I knew the exact…
MY HUSBAND GAVE ME AN “ALLOWANCE,” HIS MOTHER AUDITED MY GROCERY RECEIPTS—THEN THEY DROVE TO MOCK MY “TRAILER PARK” HOUSEWARMING
Chapter 1: The $3 Receipt Friday night in the Miller house always felt like a trial. Not dinner. Not family time. A trial. The kitchen table, a scuffed pine monster Linda insisted was “perfectly good,” was covered in crumpled receipts,…
MY NEWBORN WAS TURNING BLUE—MY HUSBAND LEFT FOR HAWAII AND SAID I WAS “JUST DRAMATIC”
Chapter 1: Blue Lips “Stop being so dramatic, Elena. He’s just coughing.” My mother-in-law said it like I had interrupted her breakfast, not like my three-day-old son was turning blue in my arms. Beatrice Vance stood in the middle of…
MY BILLIONAIRE FATHER DISOWNED ME AT MY OWN WEDDING—HE HAD NO IDEA THE “TRASH” HE MOCKED WAS ABOUT TO BECOME HIS BIGGEST REGRE
Chapter 1: Disowned Have you ever wondered what it feels like to have a billionaire father? Trust me, it is not the fairy tale people imagine. My name is Fiona Ashford. I was twenty-eight years old when my father stood…
End of content
No more pages to load
