Fox News anchor Chris Wallace on Wednesday lamented the Republican Party’s last-ditch effort to overturn President Donald Trump’s decisive election loss, noting that Americans “have never seen” anything like this before and that it is “kind of sad.”
With tens of thousands of irate MAGA supporters gathered in Washington, D.C. to protest Congress’ certification of the Electoral College votes, at least 13 GOP senators and up to 140 House Republicans are expected to object to President-elect Joe Biden’s victory on Wednesday.
While Fox News’ pro-Trump opinion hosts and commentators have urged Republicans to jump aboard the anti-democratic attempt to subvert a U.S. election, Wallace found that this deeply partisan effort has no historical parallel.
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“I think the point that needs to be made is how extraordinary this is,” Wallace said on Fox News’ America’s Newsroom. “We have never seen what we are going to see today.”
Noting that some have pointed to the 2005 congressional objection by former Sen. Barbara Boxer (R-CA) over George W. Bush’s electoral defeat of John Kerry, Wallace explained: “The difference is John Kerry, the failing candidate then, had already conceded and, in fact, he was very much discouraging and disavowing Barbara Boxer’s effort to hold the objection. She lost by a vote of 74-1 when it got to the Senate. She was the only Democrat who voted to object to the victory by George W. Bush in Ohio.”
Wallace continued: “Now you’ve got maybe 100 Republican congressmen, more than a dozen Republican senators. You’ve got the sitting incumbent president who will be making a speech in a few minutes saying the election was stolen from him. We have never, ever seen anything like this.”
The Fox News Sunday moderator went on to point out that losing candidates in the past, notably Richard Nixon in 1961 and Al Gore in 2001, actually had to preside over their own Electoral College defeats in Congress as they were vice presidents at the time.
On top of that, then-Vice President Biden himself shut down objections to Trump’s victory in Congress when he presided over the 2017 certification. The president and his allies, meanwhile, have increasingly pressured Vice President Mike Pence to block or invalidate Biden’s victory on Wednesday, something Pence has no power to do.
“So usually this is the point when everybody comes together, losing hurts but they sit there and say for the greater good of the country and in keeping with our democracy and our constitution we’re going to recognize that the person who got the most electoral votes won the election,” Wallace sighed. “And the fact that’s not going to happen today is kind of sad.”
