The Hill is reporting that Trump tweeted on Sunday: “Somebody please explain to Chris Wallace of Fox, who will never be his father (and my friend), Mike Wallace, that the Phone Conversation I had with the President of Ukraine was a congenial & good one. It was only Schiff’s made-up version of that conversation that was bad!”
Trump opened up with both barrels, slamming Wallace after his program with Defense Secretary Mark Esper – questioning the president’s phone call – and Trump’s order pulling U.S. troops out of Syria to cede the battlefield to Turkey in that nation’s assault on America’s longtime Kurdish allies.
“The president’s move opens the way for Turkish forces to launch an assault against the Kurds, the key American ally in the fight against ISIS,” Wallace said.
Trump’s personal news site?
Fox News has become Trump’s personal media outlet, elevating Fox to the questionably exalted position of “official” voice of the administration. But even that designation is in question after Wallace’s blunder on Sunday.
Chris Wallace dared to emulate his father, Mike Wallace, the CBS reporter who became one of America’s best-known broadcast journalists.
Trump actually compared Chris Wallace to his father, saying he “will never be his father (and my friend).” Trump should count himself lucky that Mike Wallace died in 2012 – Wallace would have loved to go one-on-one with Trump today.
Wallace was the epitome of an investigative journalist and would have chewed Trump up and spit him out all over the national media.
This is not the first time Trump has invoked Mike Wallace. It happened earlier this year when he complained about Chris Wallace having Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg on his program. “I like Mike Wallace better,” Trump tweeted then, reports the Huffington Post.
At a panel discussion in Manhattan last month, Wallace noted that Trump “often likes to say about me, ‘You know, I was covered by Mike Wallace, I liked him much more,’” The New York Times reported. Wallace quipped: “One of us has a daddy problem, and it’s not me.”
Journalists who don’t follow Trump’s line of rhetoric – one that he wants dished out and spoon-fed to the public – will quickly find they are at the top of Trump’s latest SH** List. Other Fox News anchors have already been added to that list, including Wallace, Ed Henry and Shepard Smith, who left the network this week.
Integrity and truthfulness are still important in reporting the news. People might not like hearing the truth, but as a journalist, none of us want to get caught in a web of deceit by passing on lies that are sugar-coated as the truth, regardless of who may be telling them.