Historian Geoffrey Ward tells CBS: Fox News would have ‘loved’ to show FDR with polio ‘at his most helpless’

Historian Geoffrey Ward told CBS News on Sunday that Franklin D. Roosevelt would have difficulty running for president with a disability like polio today because Fox News would have “loved” to show him “at his most helpless.”

During a panel discussion about the PBS documentary “The Roosevelts: An Intimate History,” CBS host Bob Schieffer noted that Roosevelt could have never hidden his inability to walk from the public today.

“Hopefully, the public today would be much more understanding and glad to have somebody that had overcome this kind of problem,” historian Doris Kearns Goodwin agreed.

“I differ with Doris a little,” Ward said. “I think if he were running now, sadly, I think TV crews would compete with each other to see who could get the footage that showed him at his most helpless. He had to be carried in and out of buildings. He had to be helped to remove his braces and so on.”

“And I think Fox News would have loved that,” he pointed out...