Chris Wallace will be the sole moderator of Tuesday’s debate between Trump and Biden.
Washington, United States:
Chris Wallace, the Fox News anchor who will moderate the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, is a seasoned journalist with a reputation for playing directly on a network where opinion leaders are biased to the right.
Wallace, a 72-year-old young man, is the son of legendary “60 Minutes” reporter Mike Wallace, who was known for his pugnacious interviews on the CBS show.
Young Wallace may not be as combative as his late father, but he’s not shy about confronting himself.
This includes taking on Trump in a news network owned by Rupert Murdoch who critics accused of being a cheerleader for the Republican president.
In a one-on-one interview with Trump at the White House in July, the president boasted of having passed a cognitive test with flying colors.
“Well, that’s not the hardest test,” Wallace replied, noting that one of the questions involved identifying an elephant photo.
He also verified a false claim by Trump about death rates from the coronavirus pandemic with the statement: “That is not true, sir.”
Wallace will be the sole moderator of Tuesday’s debate between Trump, 74, and Biden, 77, at Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio.
This is the first of three debates that will take place before the November 3 election.
Trump, speaking to Fox News Radio, said that while he had “a lot of respect” for Wallace, he was “willing to bet he won’t ask Biden tough questions.”
“He will ask me tough questions, and that will show that it will be unfair,” Trump said. “It will be controlled by the radical left.”
Fox News interviewer Brian Kilmeade rebuffed Trump’s claim, saying Wallace “is not controlled by anyone.”
‘I do not shoot’
Born in Chicago on October 12, 1947, Wallace’s parents separated when he was a child.
Wallace was raised by his mother and stepfather, former CBS News chairman Bill Leonard, and only knew his father as a teenager after the accidental death of his older brother.
After graduating from Harvard University, Wallace went to work at the Boston Globe.
He joined NBC News in 1975 for what would be the start of a long and distinguished career in television news.
During his 13 years at NBC, Wallace covered the White House, anchored the NBC Nightly News and hosted the Sunday morning political talk show “Meet the Press”.
He left NBC for rival ABC in 1989, where he hosted a show called “Primetime Thursday” as well as “Nightline”.
A registered Democrat, Wallace moved to Fox in 2003 and became the host of the network’s political talk show “Fox News Sunday”.
In an interview with the New York Times published in June, Wallace was asked about the experience working at Fox.
“Do I agree with some of the things I hear? Absolutely not,” he said. “At the end of the day, I decided that what matters to me is what I have the right to do.
“I was never suspected of a guest I booked, a question I asked,” Wallace said. “I don’t shoot. I don’t play favorites.”
He moderated one of the 2016 presidential debates between Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, becoming the first Fox News presenter to do so and earning applause for his performance from both sides.
Wallace has received numerous awards during his career, including an Emmy Award for a difficult interview in 2018 with Vladimir Putin in which he notably questioned the Russian leader on the untimely death of his political opponents.
Wallace has four children from his first marriage and two stepchildren from his second marriage to Lorraine Smothers, the ex-wife of comedian Dick Smothers.
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
