In an interview on ABC’s The View, Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace described the efforts he and his producers took to ensure no questions intended for the Las Vegas presidential debate leaked out ahead of time. (We have since learned that leaks happen)
“I’ll tell you two stories behind the scenes, one was, and now we’ve now seen with the developments at CNN, that we were concerned they were going to get the questions in advance,” Wallace said. “I was in a room at the Encore Hotel in Las Vegas, with my researcher, just the two of us, we would rip up when we had to switch to a new page. We would rip up, when we had to switch to a new page, we’d rip up the sheets of papers, the old questions, and we would stick them in one of those plastic laundry bags that you stick in the closet and we’d hide them. But now my wife tells me, my wife Lorraine, that I didn’t even know this, they were then taking some of the other pages when they couldn’t fit them into the laundry bag, going out into the casino, dropping some of the strips of paper there, to the swimming pool, because we didn’t have a shredder, so this was our unofficial shredder.”
Wallace’s work as moderator of the debate was very well received, and Wallace got a nice shoutout from Lachlan Murdoch during a Fox earnings call this week.
The View, meanwhile, will have an elections special on November 8 at 9 p.m. ET, with Joy Behar, Jedediah Bila, Candace Cameron Bure, Sara Haines and Sunny Hostin. The two-and-a-half hour special will air on Lifetime.
The special will feature Miss Universe Alicia Machado, Kathy Najimy, Vivica A. Fox, Mario Cantone, D.L. Hughley and Donald Trump impersonator, comedian Anthony Atamanuik. Chef Rocco DiSpirito will be serving up “election inspired tasty bites.”