Chris Wallace: Trump 'bears the primary responsibility for what happened' at the debate'I had baked this beautiful, delicious cake and frankly, the president put his foot in it,' Wallace tells Bill HemmerFox News, Oct 1, 2020
Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace joined "Bill Hemmer Reports" Thursday to reflect on Tuesday night's explosive first presidential debate between President Trump and Joe Biden.
Wallace, who moderated the 94-minute clash in Cleveland, began by joking that the highlights host Bill Hemmer played had led to a recurrence the "PTSD" he had "just gotten over."
"My initial reaction was, 'This is great' because so often these debates become parallel news conferences where one candidate answers the question to him, the other candidate answers the question to him," Wallace recalled. "So when the president started engaging with Biden, I thought we were gonna have a real debate here."
However, Wallace went on, "it became clear, and clearer over time that this was something different and that the president was determined to try to butt in or throw Joe Biden off ... I saw another Fox analysis that indicates the president interrupted either Biden's answers or my questions a total of 145 times, which is way more than one a minute. And he bears the primary responsibility for what happened on Tuesday night."
Wallace told Hemmer that he "began being more forceful" after repeatedly urging Trump not to interrupt the Democratic nominee.
"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 told Hemmer. "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."
At one point, Wallace expressed his biggest "frustration" by holding up his "debate book," which he stressed took "hundreds of manhours and womanhours" of research to put together a "serious, substantive debate" head of the presidential showdown.
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