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Chris Wallace and Vladimir Putin
Chris Wallace interviewing Vladimir Putin in 2018
There are two opposing ways of looking at Chris Wallace’s abrupt departure from Fox News after 18 years to join a new CNN channel. The first is relief one of the last first-rate journalists on Fox will no longer provide cover for the nation’s most dangerous source of rightwing lies and disinformation.
The other is the realization millions of Americans who erroneously rely solely on fraudulent Fox propaganda to shape their understanding of the world will be even less likely now to encounter any honest, fact-based journalism to counter the network’s increasingly extreme political attacks on democracy itself.
I have a personal as well as professional interest in this story. Chris and I became friends early in our careers as young city government reporters for the Milwaukee Journal and the Boston Globe. We got together twice a year for several years covering multi-day national meetings around the country of the US Conference of Mayors and the National League of Cities where our mayors, Henry Maier and Kevin White, were leaders.
In 1972, we both suddenly found ourselves in the middle of one of the biggest national stories of our lifetimes. Democratic National Chairman Larry O’Brien was speaking to the mayors the morning of the news burglars had broken into his Watergate office and those arrested were traced to the White House. That’s when I saw Chris’s solid journalistic instincts.
No Joke!
Chris became angry as he and I watched O’Brien and veteran political reporters treat the Watergate arrests as a big joke. To them, it was politics as usual. Somebody finally got caught engaging in political dirty tricks. Chris couldn’t believe how few recognized President Nixon running a burglary ring out of the Oval Office crossed a line that could and should end his presidency.
Chris brought that same sensibility to covering Donald Trump, the next brazenly corrupt Republican president, even while most Fox programming was covering up Trump’s crimes and perpetuating his outrageous lies. Nothing infuriates Trump like real journalism. That’s what led to the disastrous presidential debate with Trump, the obnoxious bully, on full display constantly shouting over both Joe Biden and Chris, the moderator.
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The continuing attempts by Fox News to minimize Trump’s violent Jan. 6 attack on American democracy apparently prompted Wallace’s departure. Chris personally complained to network executives about Tucker Carlson’s documentary “Patriot Purge,” falsely portraying the FBI and federal prosecutors as the villains of democracy for punishing the violent Trump mob that rampaged through the Capitol brutally injuring police officers and threatening to murder Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress to stop them from certifying President Biden’s election.
They Believe in Nothing
We now know Fox News personalities themselves didn’t believe anything they said on the air about how peaceful those rioters were. Before he invoked the fifth amendment to avoid self-incrimination for crimes, Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows turned over to the congressional committee investigating Jan. 6 personal emails from numerous Fox hosts begging him to convince Trump to call off the insurrection.
“Hey Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home . . . this is hurting all of us . . . he is destroying his legacy,” Laura Ingraham pleaded. Brian Kilmeade added, “Please get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished.” Even Sean Hannity, who usually had his own direct line to Trump, urged: “Can he make a statement? . . . Ask people to leave the Capitol.” Carlson was one of the few who remained silent, apparently enjoying the show just like Trump.
Republican support for democracy and honest elections has drastically declined since Nixon’s days. In 1974 Congress didn’t have to impeach Nixon for his crimes. When Republican Senate and House leaders obtained enough evidence, they simply withdrew their support and Nixon resigned.
Running for their Lives
This year House members and Senators in both parties were running for their lives through the Capitol from the violent insurrectionists Trump sent to overthrow Biden’s election. Yet only seven out of 50 Republican Senators joined Democrats voting to convict Trump on House impeachment charges, far short of the two-thirds needed to bar Trump from ever holding office again.
Even after Trump was defeated by the largest vote in American history, Fox News is not about to allow Republicans to abandon Trump’s most nationally divisive hot button issues. When Trump bragged the media depended upon him for big ratings, he was always talking about the network he watched all day.
Fox has always echoed Trump’s most angry, hateful rhetoric. Political conflict is good television. For Fox News, when that conflict escalates into political violence against the government of the United States to overthrow the choice of 81 million Americans for president, it’s even better television.
Never mind that American democracy can’t survive if only one of its two major political parties accepts the outcome of free and fair elections.
