‘My Job is to Be as Invisible as Possible’: A Look Inside the Preparations of Fox’s Chris Wallace Ahead of Tuesday’s Debate

All eyes are on Cleveland where, on Tuesday night, President Donald Trump goes one-on-one with former Vice President Joe Biden for the first time in a long-awaited debate showdown. And all eyes in the media world are trained on the third man involved in Tuesday’s spectacle — Fox News anchor Chris Wallace.

It is the second time in as many campaigns that the Fox anchor has been given the coveted assignment of moderating a presidential debate. On Tuesday night, Wallace will referee as Trump and Biden go at it for 90 must-watch minutes live from the campus of Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic.

Wallace will oversee the proceedings before a socially distant audience of 60-80 — down from the typical 900 — according to Frank J. Farenkopf Jr., co-chair of the non-partisan commission on presidential debates which is organizing Tuesday’s event. On CNN Sunday, Farenkopf shared a number of key details about the Wallace-helmed debate. Notably, he addressed the much-discussed issue of whether the moderator will be charged with fact-checking the candidates.

“When we choose moderators we make very clear to them there’s a vast difference between being a moderator in a debate and being a reporter who is interviewing someone,” Farenkopf said. “When you’re interviewing someone, if they say something that is in direct opposition to something they said a week ago, your duty is to follow up and say, ‘Wait a minute, you didn’t say that a week ago.’ But that’s not the case in the debate. If one of these candidates says something on the stage Tuesday, it’s the role of the other person in a debate to be the one to raise that and say, ‘Wait a minute, you’re changing the position’ and so forth, rather than the moderator.

“So, the moderator is a facilitator … we don’t expect Chris or our other moderators to be fact-checkers. The minute the TV is off, there are going to be plenty of fact-checkers in every newspaper and television station in the world. That is not the main role of our moderators.”

No one can offer better insight on how Wallace will approach his job as moderator than Bret Baier, Wallace’s longtime Fox News colleague.

The Special Report anchor, who has previously moderated primary debates with Wallace, told Mediaite last Friday that Wallace will likely step in if either Trump or Biden makes a completely outrageous claim. But otherwise, Baier believes that Wallace will let Trump and Biden police each other.

“I think there are times when something is said that is so egregious to where the fact base is that the pushback is necessary,” Baier told Mediaite. “There are other times where things are said that you need to get to another topic and time is running out, and it’s not worth that pushback time… I think most of the debate moderator’s job is to set the table, and let the people at home decide. And it’s also the fact checker is the opposite candidate. So in the rebuttal time, that fact check happens in real time with the candidates going at each other.”

A main focus of Wallace’s, according to Baier, will be to keep the candidates from straying too far off-topic while still giving Trump and Biden a wide berth.

“The best part about the debates and the one-on-one format is that it’s free-flowing,” Baier said, “That candidate doesn’t really have to answer the question that’s asked. Chris is going to press, I’m sure. But he takes that time. And so it leads to other topics, other things, and it’s very organic. I think Chris is good at pulling in the reins and getting them back back in line, as far as what is the topic at hand.

Drawing on his past experience moderating debates with Wallace, Baier says that the Fox News Sunday anchor has been — in these days leading up to the debate — “murder boarding much like a lawyer… ahead of a trial.”

“What are the things that are going to pop up?” Baier said of Wallace’s thought process. “And what could this candidate say? … And what would the follow up be?”

But the guiding principle for Wallace, according to Baier, will draw from the philosophy of the late PBS anchor Jim Lehrer — whose belief on debates was, “It’s not about you.”

“You don’t want to be the story, ever, in a debate scenario,” Baier said. “It’s about pressing, tossing the questions, following up. However, the two candidates are the real story. And I think that’s where Chris’s mindset is.”

Indeed, that’s how the man himself says he’s approaching his task. In a Fox News special ahead of the debate, Wallace said he intends to stay out of the way.

“My job is to be as invisible as possible,” Wallace said. “I try to get them to engage, to focus on the key issues, to give people at home a sense of why I want to vote for one versus the other. But if I’ve done my job right, at the end of the night people will say, ‘That was a great debate. Who was the moderator?’”

Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com