Chris Wallace announced on Sunday that he is leaving
Fox News after 18 years to join CNN's streaming service, CNN+, set to launch in 2022.
Wallace, 74, host of "Fox News Sunday" and Fox's most well-known moderate news voice, will host a
CNN+ weekday show featuring interviews with newsmakers "across politics, business, sports and culture," according to CNN.
Wallace, whose latest four-year contract was up at the end of the year, called his years at Fox a "great
ride" and said he was "ready for a new adventure" and wants the leeway to cover a wider variety of topics.
"I am thrilled to join CNN+," he said in a statement. "After decades in broadcast
and cable news, I am excited to explore the world of streaming. I look forward to the new freedom and flexibility streaming affords in interviewing major figures across the news landscape — and
finding new ways to tell stories."
Wallace's hire "speaks volumes about our commitment to journalism and CNN+, and we are thrilled to have Chris on the ground floor of helping us build the next generation of
CNN and news," stated CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker.
"We are extremely proud of our journalism and the stellar
team that Chris Wallace was a part of for 18 years," Fox News said in a statement, adding that other hosts will rotate on the Sunday show until a permanent host is named."
Fox often pointed
to Wallace, known for tough interviews with both Democrats and Republicans, when defending against criticisms of the network's increasingly right-wing slant. Wallace was the first Fox News journalist
to moderate a presidential debate (in 2016, and again in 2020), and the first to be nominated for an Emmy.
Donald Trump, as well as his Fox-watching supporters, were irritated by Wallace's
criticisms of Trump over the years.
Trump "expects complete loyalty from Fox News. Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace is the rare personality on the network that
refuses to give it to him," wrote Vox, just prior to the 2020 presidential debate.
In an interview with Trump in July 2020, Wallace deflated Trump's bragging about having passed a cognitive
test that Wallace described as "not the hardest" ('It shows a picture and it says, ‘what’s that,’ and it’s an elephant,” he added), and elicited
Trump's infamous comment "It is what it is" in response to Wallace's pointing out that more than 1,000 people were dying of COVID each day.
Wallace had reportedly expressed concerns to Fox
News management about "Patriot Purge," a recent special by Fox News' Tucker Carlson that has been widely criticized for its false claim that the Jan. 6 insurrection was a "false flag" operation meant
to discredit right-wing groups.
Conservative journalists Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg quit Fox News last month in protest of Tucker's program. Shepard Smith left Fox News in 2020, after 23
years, for CNBC. Juan Williams, the sole left-wing representative on Fox's "The Five" for seven years, left in May 2021, followed by Democratic analyst Donna Brazile, who left after a short stint with
the network, to go to ABC.