US election: Chris Wallace torches Joe Biden for ‘hiding’ from questions

One of America’s most respected political journalists has torched Democratic nominee Joe Biden, accusing him of “hiding” from scrutiny.

One of America’s most respected political journalists has torched Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, accusing him of “hiding” from scrutiny.

Chris Wallace is the host of Fox News Sunday, a weekly current affairs program which features interviews with the most powerful people in US politics.

He has been trying to get Mr Biden to come on the show, without success, for months.

Speaking to Fox News radio over the weekend, the veteran reporter expressed his surprise that neither Mr Biden nor any of his campaign surrogates were going on any of the TV networks’ Sunday shows ahead of the Democratic National Convention this week.

He said that decision bucked a trend that went all the way back to 1988.

RELATED: Who is speaking at the Democratic convention, and when

“I started on Meet the Press in 1988. I’ve been doing it on and off for, what is that, 32 years?” Wallace pointed out.

“And it always happens that the Sunday before the convention, the campaign puts out top officials to preview the convention to say, ‘This what we’re going to try to accomplish.’

“So, you know, we (were) counting all week on having a top official from the Biden campaign – the campaign manager, the top pollster, the chief strategist – to talk about what they’re going to talk about during this next week.

“They are not putting anybody out. And at first I thought, ‘Well, maybe it’s because it’s Fox News, and they’re boycotting us. No! They’re not putting anybody out on any of the Sunday shows.

“I don’t understand what’s going on here. This is the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. As I say, it’s a traditional thing. We’re going to do it for the Republicans a week from (now).

“And the Biden campaign isn’t putting anybody out.”

Respected Fox News journalist Chris Wallace. Picture: Paul Richards/AFP

Wallace said the campaign’s behaviour reflected Mr Biden’s broader failure to expose himself to any serious questioning since announcing Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate early last week.

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“This just is of a piece with the vice president not doing, really, any serious interviews, not answering any questions since the rollout (of Ms Harris),” he said.

“He continues to lead with what I’ll call ‘the basement strategy’. I don’t think you can hide from now until election day. I just – I don’t think it’s possible.”

It is true that Mr Biden continues to hold a comfortable lead over President Donald Trump – the latest RealClearPolitics polling average has him ahead by 7.5 per cent.

Whether those polls can be trusted, given what happened in 2016, is another matter. You can read about it in more depth here.

RELATED: Trump’s election polls are terrible, but can they be trusted?

You might remember Wallace for his rather wild interview with Mr Trump last month, during which the President doubled down on his claim that Mr Biden lacked the mental faculties to do the job.

“Biden can’t put two sentences together. They wheel him out, he goes up, he repeats, they ask him questions. He reads a teleprompter and then he goes back into his basement,” Mr Trump told Wallace.

“Is Joe Biden senile?” Wallace asked.

“I don’t want to say that. I’d say he’s not competent to be president,” Mr Trump replied.

“To be president, you have to be sharp and tough and so many other things. He doesn’t even come out of his basement.

“Joe doesn’t even know he’s alive, OK? He doesn’t even know he’s alive.”

RELATED: Trump insists cognitive test was ‘very hard’

Mr Trump’s election opponent, Joe Biden. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

The conversation eventually turned to a cognitive test Mr Trump had been boasting about passing. The test in question, called the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, is used as a screening tool to identify cognitive dysfunction, including early dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

RELATED: Take the test Trump has bragged about passing

“Well I tell you what, let’s take a test. Let’s take a test right now. Let’s go down – Joe and I, we’ll take a test. Let him take the same test that I took,” Mr Trump said.

Wallace seemed to have been anticipating that response.

“Incidentally, I took the test too, when I heard that you passed it,” he said.

“Yeah, how did you do?” the President asked.

“It’s not the hardest test. It has a picture and it asks, ‘What’s that?’ And it’s an elephant,” Wallace replied, a little dryly, as an image of the test flashed up on screen.

The question Wallace referred to tasks the subject with identifying pictures of different animals. Another asks them to copy an image of a cube. A third asks them to read out a list of letters and tap their hand every time there’s an A.

“See, that’s all misrepresentation. It’s all misrepresentation,” Mr Trump shot back.

“Because, yes, the first few questions are easy, but I bet you couldn’t even answer the last five questions. I’ll bet you couldn’t. They get very hard, the last five questions.”

“Well one of them was, ‘Count backwards from 100 by seven’,” Wallace said.

“Ninety-three,” he added, as if to prove his own mental faculties.

“Let me tell you. You couldn’t answer, you couldn’t answer many of the questions. I guarantee you Joe Biden could not answer those questions. And I answered all 35 of those questions correctly,” Mr Trump said.

Mr Trump spent a couple of weeks talking about the test whenever he got the chance. Picture: Eric Baradat/AFP

The interview lasted for 40 minutes, so there was time for Wallace to cover plenty of ground.

Asked how “crushing” it would be if he lost the election, Mr Trump answered confidently.

“I won’t lose,” he said.

“The country, in the end, they’re not going to have a man who’s shot. He’s shot. He’s mentally shot.

“Let Biden sit through an interview like this. He’ll be on the ground crying for mummy. He’ll say, ‘Mummy, mummy, please take me home’.”

Of course, we will never know whether or not that prediction is true unless Mr Biden actually does grant Wallace an interview. We live in hope.