Chris Wallace found himself at odds Wednesday with other Fox News hosts who have begun claiming Sen. Kamala D. Harris leans further to the left side of the political spectrum.
The “Fox News Sunday” host rejected claims made by several of his colleagues on the cable network about the presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee’s politics.
“She is not far to the left, despite what Republicans are going to try to say,” Mr. Wallace said about Ms. Harris during the “America’s Newsroom” program, Mediaite first reported.
Indeed, several other Fox News personalities made such claims about the California Democrat shortly after presumptive nominee Joseph R. Biden named her as his running mate Tuesday.
Sean Hannity claimed on his Fox News show Tuesday evening that Ms. Harris has a “radical extremist record” and that her selection “solidifies what’s the most extreme radical far-left out of the mainstream ticket of any major political party in American history; Laura Ingraham similarly said on her show afterward the Democratic ticket is “too left-wing for Reverend Wright,” seemingly referring to Jeremiah Wright, former President Barack Obama’s onetime pastor who became the center of controversy leading up to the 2008 election.
Ms. Harris had been widely reported for months as being among the top contenders to run alongside Mr. Biden against President Trump in November prior to being named this week.
Some progressives have argued her history as a criminal prosecutor — including serving as San Francisco’s district attorney and later California’s attorney general — hardly places Ms. Harris on the far-left side of the political spectrum, however.
“We are in the midst of the largest protest movement in American history, the subject of which is excessive policing, and the Democratic Party chose a ’top cop’ and the author of the Joe Biden crime bill to save us from Trump,” reacted Briahna Joy Gray, a former national press sectary for the 2020 presidential campaign mounted by Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent. “The contempt for the base is, wow.”
Syndicated political cartoonist Ted Rall reasoned Democrats acted with more than just mere contempt, meanwhile.
“By choosing Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate, Joe Biden is sending a message to the progressive left base of the Democratic Party: Drop dead,” Mr. Rall wrote for The Wall Street Journal.
Reacting to Mr. Biden selecting Ms. Harris as his running mate, Mr. Trump said Tuesday the senator was his “number one draft pick” to be the Democratic vice presidential nominee.
Mr. Wallace countered that Mr. Biden could have selected a running mate less threatening to Mr. Trump’s reelection campaign that Ms. Harris, however.
“Despite the president saying yesterday that Kamala Harris was his number one draft pick, that’s the one he wanted the most, I promise you there are a lot of people he would have liked to be running against much more,” Mr. Wallace said Wednesday.
Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris are slated to hold their first public event together later Wednesday.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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