Fox News/CNN slam Trump’s election night speech: 'That’s what authoritarians say'

Following President Trump’s late night address at the White House as the election seemingly grew increasingly tighter, Fox News’ Chris Wallace took issue with some of the president’s statements. Trump claimed victory in states that were still counting votes and were too close to call, even going so far as to say that he had won the election. Trump also doubled down on his weeks-long threat to take the election to the Supreme Court.

Wallace refuted the president’s claim that he had won the handful of states that had yet to be called, pointing out that it’s normal for states to not have the full vote count on election night, and that it can sometimes take days. Wallace also said he doesn’t think Trump’s possible attempt to invalidate votes will work in the courts. He said that in making those remarks, Trump “threw a match” into an “extremely flammable situation.” And, not surprisingly, Trump’s statements drew a much stronger repudiation from a panel on CNN.

Jim Acosta joined in the criticism of Trump’s claims, saying, “I think our Founding Fathers are probably rolling in their graves right now. They did not envision a president of the United States delegitimizing an American election, and that is what the president just did a few moments ago. It’s historic, and it’s historically awful.”

Video Transcript

CHRIS WALLACE: This is an extremely flammable situation and the president just threw a match into it. He hasn't won these states. Nobody is saying he's won the states. The states haven't said that he's won.

KYLIE MAR: Following President Trump's late night address Tuesday night, Fox News's Chris Wallace took issue with the president's claim to have won several states that had not finished counting votes and his insistence that he will go to the Supreme Court to stop remaining votes from being counted in those states.

CHRIS WALLACE: Voting to stop, yes. But vote counting? You know, these states by state law all have the opportunity and states routinely are unable to count votes by election night early into the morning of the day after the election, and it goes on for days.

KYLIE MAR: And Wallace doesn't believe Trump's efforts to stop votes from being counted will work.

CHRIS WALLACE: I don't know if he literally meant that he's going to try to stop the counting of the vote. But I would think that that would be extremely inflammatory, and frankly, I don't think it's something that the courts would allow.

KYLIE MAR: Even before the tight race on election night, Trump had threatened legal action to stop votes from being counted. And after he repeated that threat from the White House Tuesday night, the CNN panel took Wallace's criticism of the president even further.

DANA BASH: To say what he said from the White House is just not something that I don't think any of us really expected to see and hear in our lifetime. That is not what democratically elected presidents or candidates for the presidency say. That's what authoritarians say.

KYLIE MAR: And CNN's White House correspondent Jim Acosta joined in the repudiation of Trump's claims.

JIM ACOSTA: I think our founding fathers are probably rolling in their graves right now. They did not envision a president of the United States delegitimizing an American election and that is what the president just did a few moments ago. It's historic and it's historically awful.