Chris Wallace & Other Fox News Figures Who Attended The Presidential Debate Plan To Get Tested For COVID-19

Ted Johnson
·3 min read

Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace, the moderator of the recent presidential debate, said that he plans to get tested for the coronavirus following President Donald Trump’s announcement that he and First Lady Melania Trump that they tested positive.

On Fox News’ Outnumbered, Wallace also said that he believes that the president had coronavirus during the debate.

Meanwhile, a source familiar with the matter said, “We are taking all necessary precautions, including testing, to ensure the safety of our anchors, reporters and staff who attended the presidential commission debate in Cleveland or were in proximity of the White House within the last week.”

Among those who were in Cleveland were Sean Hannity, Bill Hemmer Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, along with Suzanne Scott, the CEO of Fox News Media, and Jay Wallace, its president.

Fox News Chief White House correspondent John Roberts was at a briefing on Thursday, along with Jon Decker, correspondent for Fox News Radio. Laura Ingraham was present in the crowd gathered in the Rose Garden on Saturday for Trump’s announcement that he was nominating Amy Coney Barrett the the Supreme Court. Several attendees of the event, including Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Notre Dame University President John I. Jenkins, have announced that they tested positive.

The New York Times first reported on Fox News’ plans to test those who were at the events.

Hope Hicks, a close aide to Trump who was previously in charge of communications for Fox Corp., tested positive for the virus on Thursday. She had traveled with Trump to the debate and on another trip to Minnesota on Wednesday.

Wallace said in an appearance on Fox News’ Outnumbered that he was in a “uniquely vulnerable circle” as the moderator of the first presidential debate.

“The three people on the stage for an extended period were the president and the vice president and me all without masks,” Wallace said. “And my doctor is telling me that I shouldn’t get a test today because it takes five days for the virus to load up enough. And that I could have a test, but it might well be a false negative.”

He said that he planned to get tested on Monday.

He said that based on what if the president had a test yesterday and it tested positive, “then I think he had the coronavirus during the debate. Because, you know, this talk about while he was with Hope Hicks on the plane in Minnesota on Wednesday, I don’t think you’d have a positive test.

“And again, I’m not a doctor. I’m simply telling it in terms of what I was told by my doctor. It wouldn’t load up enough to have a definitive positive test for about four or five days, which is why I’m not getting tested until next Monday.”

He also said that the “takeaway of this whole thing is the follow the science.”

“We’ve made the masks a political issue,” he said. “We haven’t — the candidates have, and it’s not a political issue. It’s a public health issue. And if I could say one thing to all of the people out there watching: forget the politics. This is a public safety health issue. The president of the United States is in the most secure bubble in the world in the sense that everybody who comes in contact with him has to take a test and he still got it. So wear the damn mask and follow the science. That’s the key takeaway.”

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