Chris Wallace: If Trump is seen as handling health, economic crisis well, ‘I don’t see how he gets beat’

“Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace said the race between President Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden will ultimately be a referendum on the way that Trump has handled the coronavirus outbreak.

The anchor added that if Trump is seen as handling it well, he “doesn’t see how he gets beat.”

The perspective from Wallace, delivered on “America’s Newsroom,” comes as a new Fox News poll shows a dead heat between Trump and Biden, with each candidate getting 42 percent of the vote.

“In all of our polls for months, Biden had a 8-9 point lead, and that’s now gone. It’s dead even,” Wallace noted.

“It seems to me as this virus goes on, that instead of this being a choice between the president and Joe Biden, as a lot of elections are, I think that this election is going to end up being a referendum on President Trump and the handling of the coronavirus,” he continued.

“As we get into September and October after Labor Day, I think people are going to make a judgement, and they’ll understand, the president didn’t create the virus, so I think they’re going to be fair-minded about it,” Wallace added before asking, “Do they think he handled the health crisis well? Do they think he handled the economic crisis well?”

“If they do, I don’t see how he gets beat,” he concluded. “If they don’t, I don’t see how he could win.”

With public campaign events suspended amid the pandemic, Biden has conducted interviews and what have been described as “shadow coronavirus briefings” from his Delaware home.

But the former vice president has gained little traction on the media front compared to Trump, who is seen by an average of 8.5 million people during his coronavirus task force briefings as the pandemic has dwarfed almost all 2020 political coverage.

Trump also received 51 percent approval of his handling of the coronavirus crisis in the same Fox News poll, with his overall approval rating coming in at 49 percent, an all-time high in the poll.

Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,  received 80 percent approval of his handling of the pandemic, while Deboroah Birx, a medical doctor who is heading up the White House response team, received 62 percent approval and Vice President Pence clocked in at 52 percent in the same poll.