president obama is appearing on fox<u+2019>s sunday politics show to push republicans to support merrick garland<u+2014>but he will make bigger news talking about hillary<u+2019>s email scandal.









<u+201c>i think where he makes the most news is about hillary clinton,<u+201d> wallace said<u+2014>an assessment that is likely to be greeted with apprehension at clinton campaign headquarters in brooklyn. <u+201c>he hasn<u+2019>t been asked about it in awhile. back in october, on 60 minutes, he said she had not jeopardized national security with her private email server. since then, we<u+2019>ve found out that 2,000 of her emails were classified and 22 were top secret. so could he say flatly that she didn<u+2019>t give away america<u+2019>s secrets?<u+201d>









<u+201c>i think fox news is more critical of this president than most other news organizations,<u+201d> wallace answered in an email to the daily beast.<u+00a0><u+201c>the white house sometimes doesn<u+2019>t like that. but i think we are doing our job<u+2014>telling all sides of the story. i also think the white house doesn<u+2019>t distinguish between our hard news operation and the opinion shows.<u+201d>









<u+201c>he has nominated merrick garland to the supreme court, and they<u+2019>re very frustrated with the fact that the republican senate refuses to even hold confirmation hearings, let alone to give him an up or down vote,<u+201d> wallace said in a phone interview, adding that he <u+201c>pushed particularly hard<u+201d> in his pitch to the white house that his program was well-positioned to serve their interests. <u+201c>they saw fox news sunday as an opportunity to reach out to republicans or independents or conservative democrats to try to put pressure on republican senators to give a full vetting, a normal vetting, to judge garland.<u+201d>









obama told wallace that even if clinton is elected in seven months, and the senate goes into a lame-duck session, he plans to stick by garland as his preferred nominee instead of pulling the nomination to let clinton fill the seat vacated by the death last month of associate justice antonin scalia.









wallace, meanwhile, declined to wade into the intrigue surrounding fox news star and frequent donald trump target megyn kelly, who has been critical of her colleague bill o<u+2019>reilly for not defending her more robustly, and recently confided to variety that while she<u+2019>s grateful for fox news chairman roger ailes<u+2019>s staunch support, she must <u+201c>keep [her] options open<u+201d> on whether to re-up with fox when her next contract talks come up after the november election.









<u+201c>i think any time that the president is doing an interview with a television program that he hasn<u+2019>t done an interview with for a while<u+201d><u+2014>in this case, not since obama<u+2019>s sole fox news sunday appearance in 2008, when he was a mere candidate for president<u+2014><u+201c>it<u+2019>s an opportunity to reach a new audience, or at least an audience that may not have heard from the president directly in a while.<u+201d>









certainly, while they personally exempt wallace, a registered democrat, obama and his aides haven<u+2019>t been shy about expressing their disdain for the top-rated cable channel founded by former republican strategist ailes at the behest of media mogul rupert murdoch in 1996, around the same time that obama was launching his political career back in chicago.









obama has frequently made fox news the butt of his comedy routine at the white house correspondents association dinner, and in april 2011, at the height of trump<u+2019>s birther antics, showed the audience what he termed <u+201c>my official birth video,<u+201d> which turned out to be the nativity scene from the disney animation the lion king.









<u+201c>i asked him about all the anger among americans, both democrats and republicans, whether it<u+2019>s bernie sanders supporters or donald trump<u+2019>s supporters<u+2014>people who feel dealt out of the game in washington and on wall street<u+2014>and does he take any responsibility for the fact that after eight years, people still feel the game is rigged.<u+201d>









wallace said he also asked the president why he appeared to be so disengaged and emotionally contained when reacting to acts of terrorism that made many americans angry<u+2014>cheerfully golfing in martha vineyard after commenting on the beheading by isis of journalist james foley, and enjoying a baseball game in cuba after the horrific attacks in brussels.









<u+201c>we also had a very interesting conversation when we did a walk-and-talk, where i asked him what is best day and worst day at the white house was,<u+201d> wallace said.<u+00a0><u+201c>we were in the law library where he wrote the book dreams from my father<u+2026>there couldn<u+2019>t be a sharper contrast with the oval office.<u+201d>
obama will address hillary<u+2019>s email scandal on first ever <u+2018>fox news sunday<u+2019>
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