Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace hit back against Newt Gingrich on Friday for dismissing House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry as “an unconstitutional coup d’état,” telling viewers that “this is the exact opposite of unconstitutional.” Wallace went on to accuse Gingrich, a former Speaker of the House, of hypocrisy, noting that Gingrich himself had spearheaded the impeachment effort against former President Bill Clinton. While Gingrich claimed the 2019 impeachment effort was attempting to re-hash the results of the 2016 election, Wallace told Fox News’ Martha MacCallum the remark was a “reach for somebody like Newt Gingrich who was involved in the last impeachment effort.” “The Constitution specifically says that impeachment is left to Congress with very little statement as to how they want to conduct it. And in fact, I think I remember that Newt Gingrich did an impeachment effort, led an impeachment effort against Bill Clinton in 1998... Was that an effort to overturn an election? No, he was investigating stuff,” he said. In separate comments Friday, Wallace also pushed back against those criticizing the whistleblower who sparked the impeachment inquiry, noting that “the basic story that the whistleblower alleged in the first place appears to have been largely corroborated.”
