Chris Wallace Profile…
Broadcasting & Cable’s Marisa Guthrie profiles FNC’s Chris Wallace…
At Fox News, Wallace is in his element, mixing it up with Beltway insiders. “I love politics,” he says. “I love the strategy of it.”
He’s been known to spar with colleagues, competitors and, in one famed case, a Clinton. In a 2006 interview with the former president, ostensibly to discuss climate-change initiatives, Wallace made headlines when he asked why the Clinton administration had not “put [Osama] bin Laden and al-Qaeda out of business.” And during the most recent election, Wallace took the hosts of Fox & Friends to task on the air for their “Obama-bashing.”
“Whatever he thinks is the appropriate thing to do, he does,” says Sam Donaldson, Wallace’s onetime competitor when both covered the Reagan administration, Wallace at NBC and Donaldson at ABC.
Donaldson recalls Wallace’s tenacity with Ronald Reagan, who was known to be reticent with the White House press. After the U.S. military forced down an Egyptian passenger jet carrying the hijackers of the Achille Lauro, it very nearly sparked an international incident. As Reagan deplaned from Air Force One and headed for his motorcade, recalls Donaldson, “We all jumped on him.” The press corps was asking en masse if the U.S. would apologize to Egypt.
But it was Wallace who got the prime quote. “[Reagan] was about to speed off, and Chris said, ‘Mr. President, do we have anything to apologize for?’ And he reared up and said, ‘No!’ It was a great sound bite. It illustrated what Chris does so well. He knows how to ask the right question.”
