Veteran Fox News journalist Chris Wallace expressed befuddlement over Joe Biden’s absence from the Sunday morning news show circuit ahead of this week’s national convention.
“So I’ve been doing Sunday shows with conventions. I started on Meet the Press in 1988. I’ve been doing it on and off. For what? What is that? Thirty-two years. And it always happens that the Sunday before the convention,” Wallace said this week on Fox News Radio. “The campaign puts out top officials to preview the convention and to say this is what we’re gonna try to get accomplished. So, you know, we put counting all week on, you know, having a top official from the Biden campaign, the campaign manager, the top pollster, the chief strategist, to talk about what they’re going to talk about during this next week. They are not putting anybody out.”
Wallace said he at first thought, “Well, maybe it’s because it’s Fox News, and they’re boycotting us.”
“No, they’re not putting anybody out on any of the Sunday shows point,” Wallace said. “I don’t understand what’s going on here. This is the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen that you would you know, you’re basically giving a campaign. And as I say, it’s a traditional thing. We’re gonna do it for the Republicans a week from Sunday. What are you trying to accomplish this week? And they, the Biden campaign, isn’t putting anybody out.”
President Trump and his Republican allies have attacked Biden for not conducting what they view as a sufficient amount of television interviews or holding any public events.
The Biden campaign has cited the coronavirus pandemic concerns as one of the reasons many of the former vice president’s events and fundraisers have been virtual.
Some Democratic strategists say Biden, who currently enjoys a sizable lead in most national polls, has little reason to spend time in front of television cameras.
“People say all the time, ‘Oh, we got to get the vice president out of the basement,’” Terry McAuliffe, an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, said earlier this summer. “He’s fine in the basement. Two people see him a day: his two body people. That’s it. Let Trump keep doing what Trump’s doing.”
Wallace said such a strategy could be a gamble come November.
“And this just is of a piece with the vice president not doing really any serious interviews, not answering any questions since the rollout. I don’t you know, you can try and I understand and has worked pretty well. And he continues to lead with what I’ll call the basement strategy. I don’t think you can hide from now until Election Day. I just don’t think it’s possible.”
