Remarking on protests that broke out across the United States this week, Fox News contributor Chris Wallace said the only apt historical comparison was the unrest that engulfed the country during the Vietnam War.
During an appearance on America’s Newsroom with Sandra Smith, Wallace said he was hopeful the country could overcome violent dissent in the streets after George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, died in police custody.
“The only thing that I can think of that even compares is 1968, the Vietnam War in full force, Americans being killed, protesters being shot and killed in college campuses,” Wallace said. “And then, the Democratic convention in Chicago with the anti-war protesters, police hitting them in the streets, a lot of those protesters were breaking the law themselves and being very violent, but that was one of the times you wondered, ‘Is the center going to hold?'”
In the summer of 1968, anti-war protests outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago turned violent as protesters clashed with police. Two years later, four people were killed when police opened fire on students at Kent State University in Ohio.
Wallace said he “hoped wiser heads” would prevail to restore calm to the major urban sites where protests have broken out this week.
“This is an extraordinary time,” Wallace said. “You’ve got the coronavirus. You’ve got the tremendous economic hardship. You’ve got tensions with other countries around the world. Now you’ve got — and it wasn’t just Minneapolis, you had the Arbery shooting in Georgia, we also had, obviously minor by comparison, that woman in Central Park accusing an African American man, calling the police saying she was attacked, and then, this case, which is so much worse, of a police officer, a law enforcement officer, savagely, brutally, hurting this man and eventually killing him by pressing his knee into his neck.”
Wallace criticized both President Trump and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who were engaged in a late-night back-and-forth over the city’s response to the chaos.
“I don’t know that the president attacking the mayor helps. I don’t know that the mayor attacking the president helps,” Wallace said. “What people need is a sense that justice is going to be done.”
