Former Fox News anchor Chris Wallace said his last employer presented an “unsustainable” workplace after the 2020 election and he “just no longer felt comfortable with the programming” at the media giant.
“I’m fine with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion,” Wallace told the New York Times in an interview published Sunday. “But when people start to question the truth — Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurrection? — I found that unsustainable.”
Wallace, who left Fox News last December after 18 years for cable news rival CNN, confirmed he complained to Fox News leadership about Tucker Carlson’s streaming documentary “Patriot Purge,” which set out claims the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was a “false flag” operation intended to tarnish the name of conservatives.
“Before, I found it was an environment in which I could do my job and feel good about my involvement at Fox,” Wallace told the Times. “And since November of 2020, that just became unsustainable, increasingly unsustainable as time went on.”
As Breitbart News reported, last December at the close of his program, the then “Fox News Sunday” anchor announced his departure from the show he had hosted for the past 18 years.
Wallace, who took over for the late Tony Snow in 2003, told his viewers it was time to move on.
The 74-year-old reporter noted in his Sunday interview the critics who have suggested he should have left the network sooner.
“Some people might have drawn the line earlier, or at a different point,” he told the newspaper. “I think Fox has changed over the course of the last year and a half. But I can certainly understand where somebody would say, ‘Gee, you were a slow learner, Chris.’”
Wallace had been recruited by since departed CNN president Jeff Zucker and his move was wildly applauded by CNN anchor Brian Stelter who said on his show “Reliable Sources” that Wallace’s departure “speaks volumes” about Fox News’ claimed increasing radicalism.
For his part, Wallace admitted he was “obviously unhappy” Zucker departed last month after failing to disclose his romantic ties to the network’s top marketing executive, Allison Gollust.
Wallace had previously said the departure left him “irate” as Breitbart News reported.
As to the future, Wallace said his new daily interview show will be less about politics. Instead some of his first guests will include William Shatner and singer Judy Collins.
“I wanted to get out of politics,” he told the Times. “Doing a Sunday show on the incremental change from week to week in the Build Back Better plan began to lose its attraction.”
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