Chris Wallace is eager to dive back into the world of politics ahead of the 2024 election.
After nearly two decades at “Fox News Sunday,” the longtime broadcaster left the network in 2021 for a gig interviewing celebrities and entertainment figures for a show initially planned for CNN’s short-lived subscriber streaming service.
“David Zaslav called me this summer, which is unusual, and said, ‘I really would like your voice to be part of our political coverage in 2024,’” Wallace told The Hill during a recent interview, referring to the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery. “And I have to say, having been away from it for it for almost two years, I was getting itchy.”
This year, he launched “The Chris Wallace Show,” airing Saturday mornings on CNN and streaming weekly on Max.
The show features a panel of pundits and news commentators discussing the biggest stories of the day, rather than the one-on-one lawmaker interviews that are a staple of a weekend public affairs programs.
And while it hasn’t posed a serious ratings challenge to Wallace’s old network, the host has sparked headlines, and even some pushback, in recent months with commentary on major pop culture figures such as Taylor Swift and Adam Driver.
The foray into the world of entertainment was a new chapter for Wallace, who was hired by CNN as part of a major push into subscriber-based streaming news.
CNN+, as it was known, was ultimately shuttered just a day after it was launched and weeks after the network’s former president, Jeff Zucker, was forced to resign.
Zucker’s successor, producer Chris Licht, spent just one year on the job after reshaping CNN’s programming and shifting around top talent, including Wallace, before being ousted by the network’s parent company amid sluggish ratings and a slew of internal controversies.
“It’s been a bumpy ride,” Wallace concedes of his time at CNN. “But one of the things that impressed me when I came to CNN is how big it is. We have 4,000 people all over the world. I don’t know anybody that has that in this day in age.”
Wallace estimates he’s worked in journalism for nearly 60 years, saying he was an intern for Walter Cronkite as a teenager covering Barry Goldwater at the Republican Convention in 1964.
For two decades, Wallace was closely associated with Fox’s straight news division, which stands in contrast to the network’s often controversial yet highly rated prime-time opinion programming.
“Coming from Fox, I used to get a lot of credit. People would come up to me and say, ‘I love how you play it straight. I love how even-handed you are,’” he said. “And on the one hand, I like praise just as much as the next person, but on the other hand, I actually found that kind of depressing.”
Wallace says he recognizes that in recent years CNN was viewed by many as “in opposition to the Trump administration,” but described efforts by the network to get “back to best practices and basic principles” of journalism.
And he has big stories to cover next year, particularly the 2024 GOP primary and what is expected to be the ensuing rematch between former President Trump and President Biden next fall.
“Through no fault of the moderators, I don’t think they’ve been particularly productive,” Wallace said of the first four GOP primary debates. “Which isn’t to say they shouldn’t be held, but it’s awfully hard to get engaged in a debate when the person who’s leading the field by 30 points isn’t there.”
He has interviewed the former president and moderated debates Trump participated in, saying he takes “very seriously” the former president’s recent threats against the media and suggestions that he would take a more authoritarian approach to governing in a second term.
“You know the old Maya Angelou line. ‘When someone shows you who they are, believe them.’ Donald Trump has shown us in spades who he is,” Wallace said. “There’s every reason in the world to think a second Trump term will be more alarming, more threatening and more challenging to our basic constitutional norms.”
Meanwhile, Biden, Wallace said, “isn’t in good shape,” noting polling showing the 81-year-old president’s approval rating among the lowest it’s been since he took office.
“Age is absolutely a legitimate issue,” he said. “When the president says, ‘Watch me,’ I think a lot of people are watching and they’re concerned. He has every right in the world to run, but I don’t think it’s negative to say he’s got real political problems.”
Wallace brushed aside questions about what a potential Trump vs. Biden rematch could mean for outlets at a time when news fatigue and an increasingly fractured media environment have prompted big questions about the future of cable news and the media more generally.
“I think the question isn’t what does it mean for the news media, it’s what does it mean for the nation,” he said. “Obviously there are times you are more excited about the choice or less excited about the choice. … But I’ve never seen less enthusiasm for a potential race and what it portends for the choices the country faces over the next four years than a Trump-Biden rematch.”