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Despite Chris Wallace now working for CNN, his latest behavior suggests he may still have the heart of a Fox News newsman after all.
During a discussion this week with far-left pseudo-historian Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times, Wallace didn’t hold back in attacking the false statements that the so-called Times’ “journalist” has penned.
Particularly this false statement: “We like to call those who lived during World War II the Greatest Generation, but that allows us to ignore the fact that many of this generation fought for democracy abroad while brutally suppressing democracy for millions of American citizens.”
The statement was plucked from a Times Magazine essay that Hannah-Jones penned three years ago titled, “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true.”
The central thesis of the piece is that Americans owe their democracy to black Americans versus, say, the Founding Fathers.
“We were told once, by virtue of our bondage, that we could never be American. But it was by virtue of our bondage that we became the most American of all.”–#MacFellow @nhannahjones https://t.co/hqvlXeaMUw pic.twitter.com/9BHXOpFDE1
— MacArthur Foundation (@macfound) August 14, 2019
“I am in no way minimizing our terrible racial legacy, but in some of these things, aren’t you overstating?” Wallace bluntly asked the pseudo-historian during this week’s interview.
“How would you define democracy?” she replied, answering Wallace’s question with a question.
Instead of reiterating his question, Wallace played along.
“Rule by the people,” he said.
Hannah-Jones replied by describing the realities that blacks had faced during the early 20th century.
“So if you have half of the country, where in some states majorities, in many other states pluralities — 25 percent of the population, 40 percent of the population — cannot vote, have their vote violently suppressed, where there’s a single one-party, one-race rule in a region where about 30 percent of the population is black, would you consider that democracy?” said asked.
“Listen, women weren’t allowed to vote [either],” Wallace promptly clapped back.
“We weren’t a democracy then either. If half of the population can’t vote, I don’t know how you define democracy, but I don’t define that as democracy,” Hannah-Jones replied.
“I agree with that. I’m just not sure I’d say that if it weren’t for blacks, there wouldn’t be a democracy at all,” Wallace retorted.
The pseudo-historian then doubled down.
“Well, we know how we got democracy. It was through a decades’ long black resistance struggle called the civil rights movement. That is a black rights’ struggle. You may not like the framing, but …,” she said.
She continued by noting how black soldiers would go fight overseas and then return home, only to be lynched for wearing their uniform.
“You can’t call yourself the greatest democracy and the greatest democratizing force in the world while violently and brutally suppressing democracy at home,” she added.
It’s at this point that Wallace tapped into his inner Fox News newsman, blasting Hannah-Jones for smearing the Greatest Generation.
He argued that the Greatest Generation was comprised mainly of “20-year-olds, 30-year-olds who came out of the farm fields of the Midwest, who came out of ethnic neighborhoods in Brooklyn and South Philly and stormed the beaches of Normandy and, you know, fought to defeat the worst regime in world history.”
And, he continued, they didn’t suppress blacks.
“The country was brutally suppressing blacks, but the Greatest Generation wasn’t,” he said.
“Well they were,” Hannah-Jones maintained.
“No, they weren’t. You’re telling me that kid coming off a farm in Indiana or that kid who came from Brooklyn was suppressing black people?” an annoyed Wallace pushed back.
“So Indiana has the largest population of the Klan in the United States. The Klan was resurged in Indiana,” Hannah-Jones quickly replied.
“I UNDERSTAND,” Wallace said in a way that signaled growing exasperation, “but that wasn’t the 20-year-old.”
“You don’t think 20-year olds were in the Klan?” Hannah-Jones responded.
“I didn’t think many of them were, no,” Wallace replied.
“I mean, I don’t know what evidence you have of that,” Hannah-Jones said.
“Well, what evidence do you have that they were, since you wrote it,” Wallace clapped back.
The snippy back-and-forth continue for roughly a minute longer, until Wallace tried once more to explain to Hannah-Jones why she is wrong to paint in such broad brushes.
“Don’t you think that’s a broad brush, that you’re willing to paint, the 20- and 30-year-olds who defended democracy? I’m not talking about the leaders. I’m not talking about the laws. I’m not talking about the country. I’m talking about the young people who risked their lives. For instance, on the beaches of Normandy,” he said.
Hannah-Jones replied with the typical Black Lives Matter-esque argument that it’s OK to paint all white people in a similar manner.
“I don’t understand this trying to parse off who gets guilt or who does not for our collective history. We have to be more honest about piercing that mythology, not to destroy our country,” she said.
“But to- if we can honestly face who we are, then we can actually become the country that we want to be. But we can’t do that by suppressing the truth. And to ask a black person whose view of the Greatest Generation was black people were getting lynched. … This was our experience.”
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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