Susan Rice hasn’t been back on Fox News since September 16, 2012, and one news anchor is definitely counting the days.
“Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace called out the national security advisor on Sunday for appearing on two other Sunday news programs — ABC’s “This Week” and CNN’s “State of the Union,” to be precise — but not on Fox.
“By the way,” he said after playing a clip of President Obama’s recent West Point speech, “National Security Advisor Susan Rice is appearing on two Sunday shows today, but the White House still has not made her available to us since we interviewed her back in September of 2012, just five days after the Benghazi attack.”
Rice made the rounds on Sunday to discuss the exchange of captured Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five top-ranking Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo. The administration allegedly broke the law by refusing to give Congress thirty days notice before making the exchange, and questions have arisen regarding Bergdahl’s capture and whether he deserted his post.
It’s the third time this year Wallace has confronted the White House on-air for shutting him out of key foreign policy discussions (RELATED: Is the Obama admin freezing Fox News out of foreign policy interviews?). On February 23, the Fox host reacted after the Obama administration put Rice on just one Sunday talk show to discuss events in Ukraine.
“We wanted to ask the Obama administration about the crisis in Ukraine,” he said at the time, “but they decided to put National Security Advisor Susan Rice on only one show today, in her first Sunday show appearance since 2012 — when she blamed the Benghazi terror attack on reaction to an anti-Islam video.”
“Of course, Fox has led the way in questioning how the administration handled Benghazi,” Wallace added. “Perhaps Susan Rice didn’t want to answer the tough questions we would’ve asked.”
And one week later he again challenged the administration for refusing Fox’s request to interview Secretary of State John Kerry despite sending him out to NBC, ABC and CBS.
“For the record, we invited Secretary of State Kerry to join us today,” Wallace noted on March 2. “But although the White House put him out on all the other broadcast Sunday shows, they declined to make him available to us — or you.”