Fox News’ Chris Wallace, the moderator of the third and final presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, said that he was “disappointed” that the network’s former chairman Roger Ailes began working with the Trump campaign.
{mosads}“I’m disappointed in Roger going to work for the Trump campaign,” he said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, published on Thursday.
“We have had to fight back for a lot of years against claims that we’re an arm of the Republican Party. We aren’t. Anybody who watches me on ‘Fox News Sunday’ knows that I’m not. I think it has given people who don’t like Fox News in the first place something to talk about. It allows people to say, ‘I told you so,’ when it’s not really true,” he added.
Ailes was reported to have helped Trump prepare for the three debates. Ailes resigned from Fox News over the summer amid mounting sexual harassment allegations.
Wallace was the first Fox News anchor to moderate a presidential debate, and received generally good reviews for his performance on Wednesday.
The “Fox News Sunday” host added that he was prepared to showcase good journalism and properly represent his news network during one of the most-watched political events of the year.
“I was not just representing myself and my show, but my news organization in a way that I suspect that most of my colleagues at the other debates’ networks didn’t necessarily feel,” Wallace said.
“I had to do the job that I do and that a lot of my colleagues do everyday, to show people who take the easy way out and just dismiss Fox News and that they don’t understand what we do everyday and the kind of journalism we practice.”
Wallace also rejected speculations that a Fox News debate moderator would give the Republican nominee an unfair advantage because of the influence of Ailes.
“I haven’t talked to him since he left, and I won’t talk to him,” he said.