Fox News’ Chris Wallace offered praise for President Joe Biden’s speech to Congress, predicting programs and benefits he promoted will play well Americans — if he doesn’t raise their taxes.
In comments following the Wednesday night address, the Fox News Sunday anchor predicted: “I think this is going to be a popular speech with the American public.”
“He offered a lot of stuff. $4 trillion will buy a lot of stuff, from millions of jobs to child care to community health centers, all kinds of stuff, community colleges,” he said.
The Hill’s Thomas Moore noted the initiative will also mean a massive increase in government involvement and spending.
But Wallace noted the Biden administration is betting that a post-pandemic American public has become less wary of the role of government.
“I think they’ve made a calculation that after COVID-19, people have come to have a different feeling about government,” Wallace said.
“They now feel more trusting and more the need of government and so where this might have turned a lot of people off, and probably still will, they believe the majority of people are going to say, the government is here, and they’re here to help you.”
Yet Wallace said said middle- and lower-income Americans will support the actions because Biden said they won’t be taxed to pay for them.
“And the other thing that’s pretty popular is he said, ‘You’re not going to have to pay for it,’” Wallace said. “’Big corporations are going to pay for it. People making more than $400,000 are going to pay for it.’ But the vast majority of people watching tonight aren’t, so offering a lot of stuff and saying you aren’t going to have to pay for it is pretty popular.”
It’s not the first time Wallace has publicly praised Biden’s speeches — enraging conservatives.
After Biden took office, Wallace said the president’s inaugural address was the “best” he’s “ever heard.”
But Wallace got some pushback from other Fox commentators who appeared in the Fox News wrapup, Mediaite noted.
“[I remember] talking at the same time as Chris Wallace about a Joe Biden speech. He waxed eloquent about how it was so powerful and unifying. I don’t think that turned out to be true at all.” said Ben Domenech, the publisher and co-founder of The Federalist.
“It’s not something that led to any kind of bipartisanship and expect the same result from this speech.”
“It’s going to be a political blip, immediately forgotten,” Domenech added. “It’s not going to change the course of anything in Washington.”
Fox News’s senior political analyst Brit Hume, kept things light, Yahoo News noted.
“What stood out to me was, I’ve covered about 45 of these by my count. I felt about this one the same way I felt about nearly all the rest of them. The best thing about it is that it’s over,” he said.
Source: Newmax
