Music

And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axe Files, with your host David Axelrod.

When Chris Wallace left his Purchase Fox News Sunday to launch a new show at CNN, it was a seismic event in the news industry.

With 50 years in broadcast journalism in 18 at Fox, Wallace is a name brand in broadcast journalism.

His move raised eyebrows and questions about just what his new project would be like.

Well, this week we'll know who's talking to Chris Wallace debuts on HBO Max and CNN.

So it was a great time for me to visit again with an old friend for a wide-ranging discussion about Putin, Trump, the news business and of course Wallace's new gay. Here's that conversation.

Chris Wallace, it's great to see you again. It's been I think five and a half years since we did our first episode together of the Axe Files and it's great to see you again.

Well, I have to tell you that after we did it, and you know, it's a very disarming thing because somebody is in TV with cameras and lights, you know, you and I were sitting around a room at Fox headquarters in DC and you kind of lose sight of the fact that this is actually going to go out to the world.

And after it was over, I got a ton of people. Oh, I listened to you on Axe.

I did also.

Good. You have an audience. I'm sure they heard stuff that they wouldn't necessarily hear in the normal course of events because you have such an interesting story.

And I really that that episode is still available. People should go back as I'm not going to go over all the old ground with you, but they should go back and listen because you have such an interesting life and history and career.

And it's it's well worth the time. But that, you know, the occasion for us to get getting together again is that you're launching a new show at CNN, who's talking to Chris Wallace.

And I want to I want to talk in depth about that. But this has been an extraordinary news day today. And you and I are both old newsmen.

And so we appreciate a good news day. And two of the characters who are in the news today are people who have talked to Chris Wallace.

People that you've interviewed, one Vladimir Putin and the other Donald Trump. And I want to ask you about them. And about the events of the day.

You've obviously been following Putin's pronouncements overnight about Ukraine. He's clearly escalating the war. He is he has been saber rattling the nuclear saber.

Tell me what you learned sitting down. First of all, how'd you get an interview with Vladimir Putin? Let me start there. Well, so it's it was in 2019. And it was I think forget it was it was right after the Trump Putin summit in Helsinki.

And in July of whatever year it was. And we had been trying to get him for some period of time. And you know it's the call comes in.

You know, as you as you well know, as somebody who was a gatekeeper in the Obama White House, you know, you're out until you're in and suddenly when you're in your doors open and you're ushered in and the decision has been made rightly wrongly to allow you to speak to the person in charge. And so we set up at the Russian Embassy in Helsinki for an interview right after the summit with Trump.

And it was interesting because it was the old Soviet embassy. In fact, they still have the hammer and sickle on over the entrance in these big empty gilded rooms and security big men in cheap suits all over the place.

...