Better late than never.
Fox News host Chris Wallace, the moderator of last year’s first presidential debate last September, appeared to advocate for a wall on the country’s southern border on “Fox News Sunday” when speaking to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Wallace, who teamed up against former President Donald Trump during the debate with then-candidate Joe Biden, asked Mayorkas, point-blank, why the federal government isn’t interested in using a physical barrier, such as a “wall,” to stop the flow of illegal immigrants entering the country.
“Why didn’t you stop them from coming into the country?” Wallace said Sunday during a conversation about thousands of migrants huddled under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, earlier this month.
“We — we did. We encountered them, they gathered — they assembled in that one location in Del Rio, Texas, and we applied the laws,” Mayorkas claimed. “We applied the public health law under the CDC’s authority, and we applied immigration law.”
Wallace, a Democrat, then found himself in the uncomfortable position of suggesting a border wall could have been effective — something Trump spent years both talking about and working to get built.
“My question is why did you allow them in the country in the first place?” he said. “Why didn’t you build — forgive me, a wall or a fence to stop them from walking in — this flood of people coming across the dam, it looks like a highway that allows them to cross the Rio Grande.”
Fox News’ Chris Wallace to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Haitian migrants:
"Why did you allow them in the country in the first place? Why didn't you build, forgive me, a wall?"pic.twitter.com/k6APdhntHc
— Alex Salvi (@alexsalvinews) September 26, 2021
Wallace appeared to understand the irony of his question as he was asking it.
Mayorkas, for his part, responded: “It is the policy of this administration. We do not agree with the building of the wall. The law provides that individuals can make a claim for humanitarian relief. That is actually one of our proudest traditions.”
Mayorkas is proud of presiding over an open border, but the odd part of this interview was seeing Wallace seemingly suggest one of Trump’s key positions before, during and after his term in the White House may have worked to prevent the border crisis.
Wallace in January of 2019 was vocal in his opposition to a border wall while speaking with former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders during an interview.
Wallace at that time was of the opinion that an open border was not a national security threat, which Sanders disagreed with.
"I studied up on this": @FoxNewsSunday fact checks @PressSec on terrorism and border security: pic.twitter.com/2j1edlDbsx
— Matt Shuham (@mattshuham) January 6, 2019
“We know that … nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists come into our country illegally,” Sanders told the Fox host. “It’s by air, it’s by land and it’s by sea. It’s all of the above.”
“[T]he most vulnerable point of entry that we have into this country is our southern border, and we have to protect it,” she added as she advocated for strict application of the country’s immigration laws.
Wallace, who opposed a physical barrier on the border, fired back.
“[Suspected terrorists are] not coming across the southern border,” Wallace claimed. “They’re coming and they’re being stopped at airports.”
Nine months into the Biden administration’s border crisis, and Wallace has seemingly now seen the light.
He apparently never held any strong personal beliefs against a border wall. It’s looking more and more like he simply opposed the man who wanted to build and maintain it.