Town hall with Pete

Fox News announces town hall with Pete Buttigieg

By CAITLIN OPRYSKO

Fox News will host a town hall with Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, the network announced Tuesday, making him the third Democrat to sit down with the network at length.

“Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace will moderate the town hall, which is set for May 19 in Claremont, N.H. Fox was slow to jump into the 2020 town hall game, hosting its first 2020 event earlier this month after ceding much of that territory to its cable rivals CNN and MSNBC, but it has rolled out events with three Democratic candidates in the past three weeks.

Buttigieg has seen his star rise in the Democratic primary recently. After officially entering the race last week, the South Bend, Ind., mayor has begun building his state operations and working to maintain his momentum in the polls.

Buttigieg’s town hall with Wallace will be Wallace’s first of the 2020 cycle. Wallace in 2016 became the first Fox News personality to moderate a general election presidential debate, overseeing the final debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Fox anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum co-hosted the network’s first Democratic town hall, a widely praised — and highly rated — event with Bernie Sanders, and the pair will moderate a town hall with Sen. Amy Klobuchar in two weeks.

The network also held a town hall with former Starbucks CEO and potential independent candidate Howard Schultz earlier this month.

The recent flurry of town hall announcements comes despite the Democratic National Committee’s refusal to allow Fox News to host an officially sanctioned primary debate, but three other candidates — former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro and Reps. Eric Swalwell and Tim Ryan — are either open working with Fox News or in talks to do so. It also comes after President Donald Trump, a loyal Fox News viewer, offered rare criticism of the channel last week for its town hall with Sanders.