President Trump took aim at Chris Wallace on Sunday, accusing the Fox News Sunday host of espousing a double standard by grilling his allies while going easy on supporters of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
A flurry of tweets from the president took issue with Wallace’s interview with Biden’s longtime colleague and friend Sen. Chris Coons, who was asked Sunday by Wallace about Biden’s leadership, the coronavirus pandemic, and the former vice president’s stance on China, comparing it to a more combative interview with his chief of staff.
“‘Next we’ll turn to people of the Biden inner circle’, said by Chris Wallace of @FoxNews after unsuccessfully GRILLING Mark Meadows. Then all softball questions to a group of Biden lightweights, including Senator Chris Coons of Delaware,” Trump tweeted. “Chris Wallace ‘forgot’ to ask a very weak and pathetic Schumer puppet, Senator Chrisie Coons, why Biden fought me when I put an extremely early BAN on people coming into our Country from heavily infected China. Biden later admitted I was right! But why no question?”
“Next we’ll turn to people of the Biden inner circle”, said by Chris Wallace of @FoxNews after unsuccessfully GRILLING Mark Meadows. Then all softball questions to a group of Biden lightweights, including Senator Chris Coons of Delaware.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2020
Chris Wallace “forgot” to ask a very weak and pathetic Schumer puppet, Senator Chrisie Coons, why Biden fought me when I put an extremely early BAN on people coming into our Country from heavily infected China. Biden later admitted I was right! But why no question?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2020
In an eight-and-a-half minute segment with Wallace, Coons defended Biden from GOP claims that he would be soft on China and touted Biden’s willingness to listen to public health experts to steer the pandemic if elected as president.
The Delaware Democrat also attacked Trump’s handling of the pandemic as well as his relationship with China, saying the president was still praising the Chinese government at the start of the coronavirus outbreak.
Former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, a vocal Trump defender, also claimed there was bias in how Wallace questioned Trump associates versus those allied with Biden.
“Compare @FoxNewsSunday’s Chris Wallace interrupting Mark Meadows vs not interrupting Chris Coons,” Grenell tweeted.
Compare @FoxNewsSunday’s Chris Wallace interrupting Mark Meadows vs not interrupting Chris Coons.
— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) August 23, 2020
In a 15-minute segment with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Wallace interrupted the North Carolina Republican several times, but the majority of the confrontations revolved around a question related to the QAnon conspiracy movement, which subscribes to the belief that a secret group of powerful sex traffickers is working to take down Trump.
The president told reporters last week he appreciated QAnon believers’ support for his reelection campaign. Trump also said he does not know much about the movement identified as a potential domestic terrorist threat by the FBI.
The majority of the Sunday exchange revolved around Wallace pushing back on Meadows’s claim that the media is focusing too much on QAnon.
“Well, listen, we don’t even know what it is,” Meadows said. “I can tell you, you’ve spent more time talking on it than we have in the White House. I find it appalling that the media, when we have all of the important things that are going on, a list of top 20s, that the first question at a press briefing would be about QAnon that I actually had to Google to figure out what it is. It’s not a central part of what the president is talking about. I don’t know anything about it.”
Wallace defended his question, trying to note several times he asked it as his final question in the last 30 seconds of the segment.
Meadows averted to trying to discuss left-wing extremist group antifa and other activities within the FBI but did not respond to whether Trump disavows QAnon.
“I don’t see it as a legitimate thing we have to address, and so we are not going to address it,” Meadows said. “We are going to talk about things that are important to the American people.”
In Wallace’s interview with Coons, he interrupted the senator only a couple of times in a smaller time frame. Wallace cut in when Coons went off topic from the focus of his questions.
