Chris Wallace Finally Talks About The Events Of The Debate

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“Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace appeared on “Bill Hemmer Reports” to comment on Tuesday’s turbulent first presidential debate between incumbent President Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

Wallace told host Bill Hemmer that he “began being more forceful” after having to repeatedly warn Trump about interrupting the Biden.

“At a certain point, 45 minutes in, I called a halt to the debate for a moment and said ‘You know, this isn’t really serving America and please stop the interruptions,'” Wallace recalled. “And the president said, ‘Well, why don’t you admonish him? And I said, ‘Because you’re doing a lot more of the interrupting, Mr. President.’ Biden was doing some, no question about it, but less than half as many times as the president.”

Wallace expressed his biggest “frustration” at one point by holding up his “debate book,” which he said took “hundreds of manhours and womanhours” of research to put together a “serious, substantive debate” ahead of the presidential face-off.

“I was really hoping for the debate that I think America wanted to see, which was a serious exchange of views,” Wallace continued. “And you know, I felt that I had gotten all of the ingredients. I had baked this beautiful, delicious cake and frankly, the president put his foot in it. And that was frustrating, frustrating for me because I tried hard to prepare for a serious debate, [and] much more frustrating, importantly, for the American people because they didn’t get the debate they wanted and that they deserved.”

“And that’s a loss for the country,” he added.

Wallace also warned against the idea of cutting the microphones of candidates who repeatedly interrupt their opponent during a debate. He said the use of a mute button would be impractical since the two candidates would still be able to hear each other but the audience wouldn’t.

“You know, they say ‘We’re going to give the moderator a button to mute them.’ Boy, I don’t want to be in the position of saying ‘You know, I’m going to interpose myself between the president and the public and say you can’t hear what he has to say now,'” Wallace explained. “I think that’s a pretty tough spot to put any moderator in.”

Hemmer asked if he will be rewatching Tuesday’s debate, Wallace responded, “Oh God, no.”

“It wasn’t something that I would want to revisit,” Wallace said. “Look, it took me four years to rewatch the Trump-Clinton debate from 2016, which I very much enjoyed. And it still took me four years to look at it. This is going to take a while before I watch this one again.”

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