Fox News's Chris Wallace Christopher (Chris) WallaceHouse to vote on resolution affirming peaceful transition of power Gayle King calls out Pelosi for calling Trump supporters 'henchmen': 'Egregious language' GOP lawmakers distance themselves from Trump comments on transfer of power MORE said Friday that "the spinning that has been done by the president’s defenders” over an intelligence community whistleblower’s complaint is "astonishing" and "deeply misleading”

The perspective from the "Fox News Sunday" anchor comes as Trump supporters and critics dig in regarding allegations that President Trump Donald John TrumpFederal prosecutor speaks out, says Barr 'has brought shame' on Justice Dept. Former Pence aide: White House staffers discussed Trump refusing to leave office Progressive group buys domain name of Trump's No. 1 Supreme Court pick MORE pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden Joe BidenFormer Pence aide: White House staffers discussed Trump refusing to leave office Progressive group buys domain name of Trump's No. 1 Supreme Court pick Bloomberg rolls out M ad buy to boost Biden in Florida MORE, a leading 2020 presidential candidate, while dangling hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid.

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"The spinning that has been done by the president’s defenders over the last 24 hours since this very damaging whistleblower complaint came out, the spinning is not surprising but it is astonishing, and I think deeply misleading," said Wallace on "America's Newsroom."

"Let’s look at what the whistleblower says. The whistleblower says that there was a troubling call in which the president asked the Ukrainian president to investigate and to look at the allegation of this doing by Vice President Biden and by his son," he continued. "We now have a rough transcript of that phone call and that’s exactly what happened. The whistleblower — and this was back in August — said that for for a very unknown and surprising reason the administration had held up aid to Ukraine. That was not widely known at the time but in fact, it turns out that it was the case.”

"The spinning that's been done by the President's defenders over the last 24hrs since this very damaging whistleblower complaint came out...is deeply misleading." - Chris Wallace on Fox News.pic.twitter.com/5Kfe6JRCT7 — Karine Jean-Pierre (@K_JeanPierre) September 27, 2019

"I guess that’s all I’m really saying. For a lot of the efforts for a lot of people defending the president and pretending this is nothing, it isn’t nothing, it’s something," Wallace later concluded.

A person close to Wallace tells The Hill that the veteran newsman was not referring to his Fox News colleagues during his commentary.

Trump has said he did nothing wrong, and has accused Democrats of starting another "witch hunt" against him, while Democrats believe the whistleblower report is smoking-gun proof of criminal behavior and have launched an official impeachment inquiry.

Polls show the public largely split on the idea of impeaching Trump.