The Vice President of the United States, the king of talk radio, White House correspondents and Fox News regulars all gathered this morning on Fox News Sunday to honor the life of and work of the show’s founding host, Tony Snow.
Chris Wallace (who took over hosting FN Sunday in 2003 when Snow decided he wanted to be, as Wallace explains, “the next Rush Limbaugh,”) opened the broadcast with an image from the Newseum, where Tony Snow is being remembered on a giant screen in the atrium. He then aired an interview with Vice President Cheney, taped late yesterday at the VP’s residence. Cheney praised Snow’s service to the president, he lauded his commitment to the fight against cancer and talked about what the future might have held. “I think he could have been a great candidate if he’d wanted to do that. I think Tony had an unlimited future ahead of him,” Cheney said.
Limbaugh phoned in and, while reflecting on what Snow meant to the conservative movement, took the time to criticize AP reporter Douglas Daniel for what he wrote about Snow:
With a quick-from-the-lip repartee, broadcaster’s good looks and a relentlessly bright outlook — if not always a command of the facts — he became a popular figure around the country to the delight of his White House bosses.
“Now, why in the world say something like that on his occasion when it isn’t the case in the first place?,” Limbaugh said. “I think it’s because he took a new tack as a press secretary.”
Wallace assembled roundtables of White House correspondents Bret Baier of Fox, Martha Raddatz of ABC and Mike Allen of Politico and a panel of Fox News Channel regulars. Nina Easton talked about Snow’s “grace” while living with and dying from cancer; and Juan Williams recounted playing a game of pickup basketball with Snow. “Did you know he could run and jump?” Williams laughed.
In a story first broadcast before he took on the job of White House press secretary Snow talked about how FN Sunday would broadcast from historic homes around Washington, because Fox News hadn’t yet built its Washington studios. Brit Hume added, “Tony Snow was the face of Fox News before there was a Fox News.”
The show concluded with a compilation of essays Snow wrote as show-closers during his days hosting FN Sunday. “The best way to keep our hearts warm our hopes alive and our lives whole is to share a little love.”