Chris Wallace reflects on Ross Perot's political career
Ross Perot crusaded against the deficit and was an early opponent of NAFTA, says 'Fox News Sunday' anchor Chris Wallace.
Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace said Tuesday, following the death of Ross Perot, that former President George H.W. Bush always felt that the Texas billionaire cost him re-election in 1992 against Bill Clinton.
"I spent some time in his post-presidency with George H.W. Bush. He was an enormously graceful and kind man. The only person I ever heard him speak ill of was Ross Perot," said Wallace on "America's Newsroom," recalling that Bush and his backers believed Perot's 19.7 million votes pulled much more support from him than from Clinton.
ROSS PEROT'S BILLION-DOLLAR JOURNEY, FROM TOP SALESMAN TO BUSINESS MAGNATE
Perot, who also ran for president in 1996, died Tuesday at age 89 after a five-month battle with leukemia. He won 19 percent of the vote in 1992 and 8 percent in 1996 as an independent candidate.
Wallace recalled that Perot was a self-made billionaire "when it meant something," before there were so many other billionaire moguls in the United States.
He said Perot made a name for himself as a candidate by highlighting the spiraling national debt in 1992, when the number was a small fraction of the current $20 trillion. In addition, he decried the jobs that would be lost to Mexico due to NAFTA.
Perot famously spoke of the "giant sucking sound" of American jobs being lost to Mexico.
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