Chris Wallace: Five things to know about the first presidential debate moderator
"Fox News Sunday" anchor Chris Wallace, a veteran of presidential debates, will open the 2020 edition, moderating Tuesday’s showdown in Cleveland, the first of three debates between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.
Wallace, 72, also moderated the final 2016 presidential debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton.
The nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) picked Wallace, along with moderators for the next two presidential debates: C-SPAN political editor Steve Scully for the Oct. 15 town-meeting format in Miami, and Kristen Welker, NBC News White House correspondent, for the final head-to-head Oct. 22 in Nashville.
USA TODAY Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page will moderate the only vice presidential debate between incumbent Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris on Oct. 7 in Salt Lake City. (All debates start at 9 EDT/6 PDT and will last 90 minutes with no commercial interruptions.)
Here are five things to know about Wallace:
Journalistic lineage and career: Wallace is the son of legendary "60 Minutes" investigative reporter Mike Wallace and the stepson of former CBS News president Bill Leonard. The younger Wallace got his first taste of journalism more than 50 years ago, working as a teenager for iconic CBS anchor Walter Cronkite during the 1964 Republican Convention. He began his career at The Boston Globe after graduating from Harvard.
He switched to TV news, with stints at NBC and ABC before moving to Fox News in 2003. He has hosted two Sunday government-affairs programs, NBC's "Meet the Press" and "Fox News Sunday."
2016 presidential debate performance: Wallace took a no-nonsense approach at the Oct. 19 gathering in Las Vegas, admonishing the audience not to cheer or boo and doing some real-time fact checking. His approach earned positive reviews from media insiders and regular voters alike.
2020 debate topics: Wallace selected the topics to be discussed during six, 15-minute segments. Subject to change due to news developments, they are, in words provided by CPD: The Trump and Biden records; the Supreme Court; COVID-19; the economy; race and violence in our cities; and the integrity of the election.
The "race and violence in our cities" wording has drawn a backlash from those who say it adopts Trump's perspective, trying to connect race and violence, rather than focusing on the effort to achieve racial justice and end police brutality. Others have criticized the absence of climate change from Wallace's topic list.
Fox factor: Trump expects the full support of Fox News, but Wallace hasn't provided it.
Trump has been a frequent Wallace critic in the last year, calling him "nasty & obnoxious" last November, blasting him on Twitter over impeachment coverage in January and leading some Fox colleagues to defend Wallace after the president tweeted personal insults, calling him a "Mike Wallace wannabe," in April.
In July, Wallace conducted a much-talked-about interview with Trump, correcting the president over inaccurate claims that Biden supports defunding the police (he doesn't) and that the U.S. has one of the world's lowest COVID-19 mortality rates (it doesn't). At the time, Wallace told "Fox News Sunday" viewers that Biden's team told him the former vice president wasn't available for an interview.
Fun facts: When he's not conducting interviews or moderating debates, Fox says Wallace enjoys watching "The Bachelor" and "TMZ." He eats chicken on Saturdays and soup after his Sunday show, and his wife, Lorraine Smothers, has written cookbooks about both foods. Wallace has six children.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Chris Wallace: Brief on the Fox News anchor and first debate moderator