Fox News broadcaster Chris Wallace took aim at Donald Trump’s premature statements of victory on Wednesday, stating that the president was making unjustified and potentially dangerous remarks.
“This is an extremely flammable situation and the president just threw a match into it,” Wallace said, referring to Trump’s early morning false claims that he had won battleground states, including Michigan and Wisconsin. “He hasn’t won these states. Nobody is saying he’s won the states. The states haven’t said that he’s won. This goes right back to what Joe Biden said ― that the president doesn’t get to say he won states, the American people get to say it, and the state officials get to declare it.”
Wallace then spoke about Trump’s attempts to insinuate that Democrats were attempting to steal the election and that he would go to the Supreme Court to stop voting.
“I don’t know whether he literally means it, but he said we will be going to the Supreme Court because we want all the voting to stop,” Wallace said. “Well, voting to stop, yes, but the vote counting? These states, by state law, all have the opportunity, and states routinely are unable to count votes by election night or early into the morning of the day after the election, and it goes on for days. Now, there may be a question as to how long you can continue to accept ballots, but there’s no question that all these states can continue to count votes for days. They don’t have to certify for weeks who has won the state.”
Wallace mentioned that just such a situation had occurred in Florida in 2000 in the race between Democratic nominee Al Gore and 43rd President George W. Bush before calling Trump’s remarks “extremely inflammatory” one last time.
The Fox News host, who butted heads with Trump multiple times during his moderation of the first presidential debate at the end of September, was only one of a number of politicians and pundits who chided the president for his early victory remarks. Even dedicated members of the GOP, like 2016 presidential candidate and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, stated that Trump had “just no basis to make that argument,” while former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said he was “very distressed” by the president’s words.
See the clip below, courtesy of Fox News.