July 17, 2020 | 4:23pm | Updated July 17, 2020 | 4:57pm
President Trump and Fox News host Chris Wallace get into a debate over whether Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden “wants to defund” the police in the tease for an interview set to air Sunday.
In a clip of the taped interview, “Fox News Sunday” host Wallace rebuffs Trump’s claim that Biden’s unity agenda with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) committed to defunding or abolishing police.
“Let’s go, get me the charter, please!” an agitated Trump says in the brief clip.
The exchange began when Wallace asked Trump about the spike in shootings in cities including New York and Chicago.
“I explain it very simply by saying they are Democrat-run cities, they are liberally run, they are stupidly run,” Trump said.
Wallace pressed Trump, saying that liberal Democrats running cities isn’t new.
“It was always bad, but now it’s gotten totally out of control — and it’s really because they want to defund the police and Biden wants to defund the police,” Trump said.
Wallace fired back: “Sir, he does not.”
Trump dug in. “He signed a charter with Bernie Sanders … it says abolish, it says defund,” Trump said before beckoning an aide to fetch the 110-page Biden-Sanders unity agenda.
According to Wallace, Trump pored over the document and could not find calls to defund or abolish police because “there isn’t any.”
Wallace said Trump “went through it and found a lot of things he objected to that Biden has agreed to. But he couldn’t find any indication because there isn’t any that Joe Biden has sought to defund and abolish the police.”
The interview was conducted outdoors near the Oval Office in heat nearing 100 degrees.
“It was about 100 degrees and he kept saying, ‘Whose idea was this?’ Well of course it was the president’s idea. But as he said, he wanted to see me sweat,” Wallace told fellow Fox News host Bill Hemmer, who aired the clip.
Trump frequently criticizes Wallace as biased against Republicans despite his standing on the conservative cable news network and it was the journalist’s first interview with Trump since 2018.
In April, Trump tweeted: “Just watched Mike Wallace wannabe, Chris Wallace, on @FoxNews. I am now convinced that he is even worse than Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd of Meet the Press(please!), or the people over at Deface the Nation. What the hell is happening to @FoxNews.”
Two weeks later, Trump added: “Chris Wallace is nastier to Republicans than even Deface the Nation or Sleepy Eyes.”
During Trump’s last interview with Wallace, Wallace asked if Trump was “in a cocoon of bitterness and resentment,” why he didn’t visit Arlington Cemetery on Veterans Days and if he would seek to change the Constitution to allow himself a third term.
The Biden-Sanders unity agenda does not use the term defund, but calls for “policies that will reorient our public safety approach toward prevention, and away from over-policing.”
Biden orally committed last week to steering funds away from police. An interviewer asked the former vice president: “But do we agree that we can redirect some of the [police] funding?”
“Yes, absolutely,” Biden said.
Polls show that framing of the debate matters significantly for public support.
A recent YouGov poll found just 25 percent support for “cutting funding for police,” but 49 percent support for “redirecting police funding toward increasing the number of social workers, drug counselors, and mental health experts responsible for responding to non-violent emergencies.”
