America’s Chris Wallace

Problem | The American

Spectator | USA News and
Politics
Robert Stacy McCain

When will Chris Wallace apologize to Katie Pavlich? More

than once, Wallace has insulted his Fox News colleague on
the network, as in a January segment about the
impeachment of President Trump, when Wallace barked at
Pavlich, “Get your facts straight!” As it turned out in that
case, Pavlich was right and Wallace was wrong — and not
accidentally so. The question at issue was Democrats’
demand that the Senate trial over what was called
“Ukrainegate” include testimony from additional witnesses.
Pavlich said this was unprecedented, and contended it was
not the Senate’s fault that “the House did not come with a
complete case.” Wallace began barking about “facts” in an
attempt to rescue Democrats from the consequences of
their failure.

Wallace’s dismal performance as

moderator in Tuesday’s Why did Wallace
presidential debate reminded use his position
many viewers of such previous as moderator of
instances in which the Fox News
Sunday host has shown his
a presidential
prejudice against Trump. And this debate to parrot
matters, not only because of how Gov. Brown’s
that ugly televised carnival might
affect the election, but because
rhetoric by
of what it tells us about the sad claiming that
state of journalism in America. If “white
Wallace is, Dov Fischer says, “the
supremacists
fairest moderator we can hope for
in today’s Left-dominated media,” and militia
there is no hope for fairness. But groups” were
what about those “facts” that
somehow to
Wallace presumed to lecture
Katie Pavlich about? Even if we blame for the
must resign ourselves to partisan Portland riots?
prejudice from the media, must
we tolerate journalists trafficking in outright lies?

That’s what Wallace did in Tuesday’s debate. Consider this

question he aimed at President Trump: “You have
repeatedly criticized the vice president for not specifically
calling out Antifa and other left-wing extremist groups, but
are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and
militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and
not add to the violence in a number of these cities, as we
saw in Kenosha and as we’ve seen in Portland?”

Where is the evidence that “white supremacists and militia

groups” were to blame for violence in Kenosha or Portland,
Oregon? Wallace’s question was not only tendentious, but
counterfactual. As regards Portland, Wallace seemed to be
echoing Oregon’s woefully misguided Democratic governor.
After a man who described himself as “100% Antifa”
murdered a Trump supporter on the streets of Portland
Aug.29, Gov. Kate Brown issued this rather bizarre
statement:

As elected officials and community leaders, we are

coming together to condemn the acts of violence in
Portland that have occurred as thousands of Oregonians
have been peacefully protesting for racial justice and
police accountability. The violence must stop. There is
no place for white supremacy or vigilantism in Oregon.
All who perpetrate violent crimes must be held equally
accountable. Together, we are committing ourselves to
do the hard work that will bring meaningful change for
racial justice and police reform.

What did the murder of Trump supporter Aaron “Jay”

Danielson have to do with “racial justice”? Danielson was
white, but so was the Antifa radical who shot him to death,
Michael Reinoehl. As for holding those “who perpetrate
violent crimes … equally accountable,” why did Gov. Brown
let Antifa wreak havoc in Portland for more than three
months before deciding that violence is bad? Where is the
evidence that “white supremacy” played any role in
Portland’s anti-police riots?

More importantly, however, why did Chris Wallace use his

position as moderator of a presidential debate to parrot Gov.
Brown’s rhetoric by claiming that “white supremacists and
militia groups” were somehow to blame for the Portland
riots? Such a claim is not journalism but political
propaganda, and that goes doubly so for what happened in
Kenosha. In case you’ve been hiding in a cave for the past
five weeks, riots erupted in this Wisconsin city on Aug. 23
after a police officer shot a black man, Jacob Blake, who
had violated a restraining order and had a warrant against
him on sexual assault charges. On the first night of what the
national media insisted on calling “mostly peaceful
protests” the BLM mob “hurled debris, smashed windows,”
and set fire to the Kenosha County Courthouse and several
vehicles.

The next morning, the Biden campaign issued a statement

that declared, “We must dismantle systemic racism. It is the
urgent task before us.” The BLM mob apparently took
Biden’s words as a command to “dismantle” Kenosha. On
the second night of riots in the city, the arsonists torched a
car dealership, a furniture store, and a state Department of
Corrections office, among other targets. Perhaps Chris
Wallace can explain how “white supremacists and militia
groups” were responsible for this violence, but probably
what he had in mind were the events of the third night of
the Kenosha riots. That was when a convicted child rapist
named Joseph Don “JoJo” Rosenbaum attacked 17-year-
old Kyle Rittenhouse.

By the way, has Chris Wallace ever mentioned Rosenbaum’s

criminal record on Fox News? He considers himself
authorized to lecture others about how important to “get
your facts straight,” why wouldn’t he want to share with Fox
News viewers the fact that Rosenbaum was convicted of
raping five pre-teen boys in Tucson? The story of what
happened in Kenosha on the night of Aug. 25 doesn’t make
sense if you don’t know that the man who attacked
Rittenhouse was a very dangerous criminal who had served
more than a decade in Arizona prisons.

Rosenbaum was captured on video that night taunting a

group of armed men who were guarding a Kenosha
business against the angry mob: “Shoot me n****!” When
Rosenbaum later set a fire, Rittenhouse ran with a fire
extinguisher to put out the blaze. Video shows Rosenbaum
chasing the teenager across a parking lot where he
cornered him, and Rittenhouse fired in self-defense, fatally
wounding his attacker. As I explained last month (“The
Media Lynching of Kyle Rittenhouse,” Sept. 3), Rosenbaum’s
attack set off the chain of events in which two other rioters
were shot, after the angry mob chased Rittenhouse. An 11-
minute video produced by attorneys for Rittenhouse clearly
shows that the teenager acted in self-defense.

Contrary to what Chris Wallace asserted to a TV audience

of millions of Americans during Tuesday’s debate, Kyle
Rittenhouse is not a “white supremacist,” nor is he a
member of any “militia group.” That was made clear in a
report Thursday by two young Wisconsin contributors to the
Federalist, Evita Duffy and Kylee Zempel, who were on the
scene in Kenosha during the riots:

In fact, the Anti-Defamation League found no evidence

he [Rittenhouse] was or is connected to any extremist
movements.

Yet Democrats and their friends in the corporate media,

such as Wallace, have tried to paint Rittenhouse as a
“white supremacist” in order to deflect all blame from
the real agitators, left-wing groups such as BLM and
Antifa.…

Not only was Wallace’s debate tactic dirty, but it is

factually wrong to say the violence and destruction that
consumed Kenosha was spawned by “white
supremacists,” given that the overwhelming majority of
 arrests were of left-wing rioters.

To quote what Wallace shouted at Katie Pavlich: “Get your

facts straight!”

You see that, as with the “Ukrainegate” impeachement

controversy, Chris Wallace’s counterfactual claims about the
BLM riots demonstrate a very peculiar sense of what is “fair
and balanced.” As many viewers of Tuesday’s debate
noticed, while Wallace invoked the violence in Portland and
Kenosha to demand that Trump “condemn white
supremacists and militia groups,” he made no similar
demand that Biden condemn BLM and Antifa, who are
directly implicated.

In essence, Wallace used his position as moderator to

amplify the Biden campaign’s “racial justice” talking points,
not only in regard to the riots but also concerning Trump’s
executive order banning Critical Race Theory (CRT) from
federal workplace training programs. Wallace dishonestly
described this as innocuous “racial sensitivity training,”
when in fact CRT is a radical ideology “rooted in Marxism,”
as Eleanor Krasne of the Heritage Foundation has said.
Wallace then permitted Biden to blabber on about “racial
sensitivity,” as if Biden, who opposed school desegregation
and praised Klansman Robert Byrd, were uniquely qualified
to promote such sensitivity, or as if somehow a sensitivity
deficit explains why America’s cities have been going up in
flames since May.

This is a dangerous lie. Jacob Blake was not shot because

Kenosha police lack “racial sensitivity”; he was shot
resisting arrest while armed with a knife. The Black Lives
Matter movement is built on a foundation of lies,
demonizing police and fomenting a paranoid view of
“systemic racism” as the all-purpose explanation for
everything wrong in the black community. What is more
dangerous to America than the dishonesty of the media in
promoting BLM’s toxic rhetoric?

Chris Wallace could have used his role as debate moderator

to be part of the solution to this problem. Instead, his
undisguised hatred of Trump inspired Wallace to become
part of the problem. What is even the point of having Fox
News as a “fair and balanced” alternative to the liberal
media if one of their most eminent journalists cannot meet
even basic requirements of truthfulness? The damage
Wallace did to Trump may perhaps prove temporary, but the
damage done to America by media bias is cumulative and
permanent.