CNBC’s Shepard Smith lauds former colleague Chris Wallace: ‘Not a partisan guy’

CNBC’s Shepard Smith complimented his former Fox News colleague Chris Wallace in an interview with “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon on Monday night, saying Wallace is “not a partisan guy” and will hold both President Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden accountable during their first debate on Tuesday night.

“I expect Chris Wallace to be prepared,” Smith said. “Nobody who has watched Chris Wallace thinks anything other than that he is a very tough, very thoroughly prepared journalist. And he has said repeatedly over the years, to me and publicly, ‘My job is to stay out of the way and be unnoticed as much as possible.’”

Shepard Smith (@thenewsoncnbc) tells Jimmy what to expect with Chris Wallace moderating tomorrow’s #Debate2020 #FallonTonight pic.twitter.com/8RN95BBMI4

— The Tonight Show (@FallonTonight) September 29, 2020

Smith, who left Fox News in October last year after 23 years at the network, said Wallace will not “let a falsehood or a misrepresentation or a ‘look over here’ kind of shiny object thing just slide.”

“He will hold them [accountable]. Both of them. He’s not a partisan guy. He’s searching for truth. He’s trying to speak truth to power and trying to get information to the public. That’s what all journalists want to do,” Smith said.

Wallace has said he wants to stay as “invisible as possible” to avoid becoming the story going into the debate that is expected to be watched by 80 million people.

“I’m trying to get them to engage … to focus on the key issues … to give people at home a sense of why they want to vote for one versus the other,” Wallace has said. “If I’ve done my job right, at the end of the night, people will say, ‘That was a great debate, who was the moderator?’”

Smith, 56, begins his new nightly newscast with CNBC on Wednesday evening at 7 p.m.