Fox News' Chris Wallace on Tuesday took on colleague Laura Ingraham after she insisted Democrats don't deserve credit for flipping the House of Representatives while praising Republicans and Donald Trump for keeping the Senate.
Wallace, after calling the Democrats' win "a very big deal," noted that it's also a big deal for Republicans to maintain the Senate. Wallace then chided his Fox News co-hosts for hyping the GOP's victory.
"If I may just put the brakes on a little bit, we are overstating a little bit the importance, not the important, but giving too much credit to Donald Trump for holding onto the Senate," Wallace said. "The fact is, this is a historically difficult year for the Democrats. The Democrats had 26 seats that they had to defend. The Republicans had nine seats they had to defend. Donald Trump won in ten of the states the Democrats were trying to defend. What we are talking about tonight—and I'm not in any way diminishing Donald Trump's efforts and the fact that he's held onto the Senate and the importance of it—but we're talking that the Republicans have taken seats in north Dakota, Indiana and Texas. Those are very red states so yes it's a victory for Donald Trump, but I think it's a tremendous overstatement to say Donald Trump pulled the hat out of the bag."
"This was something he should have been expected to do and I would say congratulations to him but let's temper our excitement over Donald Trump's performance," Wallace added.
Later, Ingraham took on Wallace's critique of who desercves credit for the midterm 2018 outcome.
"This is one thing we do know, if the Republicans were not able to take the seats that they took tonight there would be a cavalcade of criticism on Donald Trump," Ingraham said. "They would say, 'It's Trump's fault, look he went to all these cities and he couldn't turn the vote.' I believe if Donald Trump hadn't done that massive rally in Texas last week … I don't know if Ted Cruz would have won."
"The party is coming home to Trump. The party is unified," Ingraham insisted. "That doesn't mean they agree with everything he tweets or they like every position on immigration. I'm not saying that. I think most of the party realize if they are not aligned behind the basic principles of this conservative populist approach with Trump—not his tone necessarily, but his policies—you're not going anywhere. By contrast, the Democrats are going home to more of an [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez party which I think in 2020 … that's going to be a tough sell."
"I don't think that's fair to say about the Democrats," Wallace replied. "That's a complete mischaracterization."
"Laura, if you look at the Democrats who are winning across—" Wallace began.
"They're liberal," Ingraham shot back."
"It's not because they went far left, it's because they have women with intelligence or military credentials and there's this character out there," Wallace explained. "Let's wait and see what the margin is and what their policies are and if you're going to give the Republicans credit for holding on to the Senate, then I think you have to give Democrats credit for actually flipping the House."
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