There appears to have been another hot topic on Wallace’s list. By the time the interview rolled around, there was a good bit of reporting about the rot in the transition operation. As CNN’s Jake Tapper and Eric Bradner reported several days before, the Trump transition team had requested security clearance for Michael Flynn Jr., son of soon-to-be-short-term national security adviser Michael Flynn. The younger Flynn had actively promoted the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, which suggested that Democratic operatives were connected to a pedophilia ring located at a D.C. restaurant. An armed man was inspired by the bizarre scenario to visit the place, ostensibly to investigate matters for himself: He ultimately fired three shots inside the restaurant after patrons and staff evacuated it.

Recently released documents show that Stephen K. Bannon, then a top Trump adviser, said in an interview with the office of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III that Trump drew a blank on the Flynn Jr. situation when Wallace asked him about it. Yet that moment didn’t show up in the Wallace-Trump interview. “It was embarrassing for Trump, and Fox agreed to cut out that part of the interview," reads the interview document.

The document says Wallace specifically asked Trump about Flynn Jr.'s tweets. One of those tweets read: “Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it’ll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many ‘coincidences’ tied to it.” Which is to say, this would have been a good subject to put to the president-elect: What value did Trump and his administration see in someone who promoted these views?

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Trump world wasn’t excited to address the matter of Michael Flynn Jr.: that much is clear from a Tapper-Mike Pence interview on Dec. 6, 2016. When Tapper asked Pence about the security clearance, the vice-president-elect responded, “Well, I am aware, in talking to General Flynn, that his son was helping with scheduling, Jake.” Pressed again on the security clearance, Pence retreated to his point: “He was helping his dad arrange for meetings and provide meetings. But that’s no longer the case.” On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that day, Pence said Flynn Jr. had “no involvement” in the transition.

Throughout the Trump administration, Wallace has created an archive that veers from the toadyism seen on so many other Fox News programs. He routinely presses Trump officials on the news of the day, oftentimes with viral results. And even though there could be many reasons his program would cut an exchange from the final product — time constraints, for one — he whiffed here on a chance to show the public something very telling: that the president-elect was clueless about the conspiracy-mongering buzzing below him on the org chart.

In an interview with Mediaite, Wallace said that he’d asked Trump about the transition team’s firing of Flynn Jr. “He said he didn’t know anything about it and [said] he’d look into it. So I immediately thought, I’m not getting anything out if it, but like a lot of questions that you ask that didn’t go anywhere, I’m not going to use it," Wallace said. "And I never intended to use the exchange later on.”