Fox’s Chris Wallace takes Fox and Friends ‘to task’ for ‘two hours of Obama Bashing’
On Fox and Friends Friday morning, March 21, hosts Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmeade, and Gretchen Carlson spent multiple segments sensationalizing a comment Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) made the day before, in which he referred to his grandmother as “a typical white person” in some of her racial reactions. Obama made the comment while discussing his recent speech on race relations in America on a Philadelphia radio show.
When the trio welcomed Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace onto the show, instead of previewing his show this weekend, Wallace announced that he was going to take his fellow Fox hosts “to task” for their “excessive” and “somewhat distorting” coverage of what Obama said:
Hey listen, I love you guys but I want to take you to task if I may, respectfully, for a moment. I have been watching the show since 6:00 this morning when I got up, and it seems to me that two hours of Obama bashing on this typical white person remark is somewhat excessive and frankly I think you’re somewhat distorting what Obama had to say.
Wallace — who said that the issue “was a little more complicated than we’ve been portraying” — went on to chastise his very uncomfortable-looking colleagues for the next five minutes. Watch it:
Trying to defend their coverage, Carlson said they played up Obama’s comment because she “felt that maybe the attention was being taken away from what people really wanted to hear Barack Obama speak about, which was his association and what he thought about the comments by his minister Jeremiah Wright.”
Noting Obama’s speeches this week on the economy and the war in Iraq, Wallace replied that “maybe it’s the media doing” the deflecting:
Far be it for me to be a spokesman for the Obama campaign, and I will tell you that they would laugh at that characterization, but you know, the fact is that after giving a speech on race earlier this week, on Tuesday, he gave a major speech on Iraq on Wednesday and a major speech on the economy yesterday.
And so, I think they would say that in terms of deflecting attention away from the issues people really want to hear about, maybe it’s the media doing it, not Barack Obama.
“I appreciate you respecting us enough to say it on camera as opposed to writing an email,” said Kilmeade sarcastically after hearing Wallace’s criticism.
Update:
Kilmeade storms off Fox and Friends set over co-hosts’ Obama-bashing.
Earlier today, ThinkProgress noted how Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace chastised his colleagues on the Fox and Friends morning show for their “excessive” and “somewhat distorting” coverage of Sen. Barack Obama’s comments about his grandmother. Earlier in the show, according to the Huffington Post, Fox and Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade “argued that the remark needed to be taken in context and eventually got so fed up with his co-hosts that he walked off set.” Watch it:
From Think Progress / The Rag Blog
Media Matters has a transcript from the show.
