Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace said today that his show “kind of discovered” Paul Ryan before he was well-known. Wallace added that when Fox News Sunday gave Ryan a birthday cake earlier this year as a “photo-op,” it backfired because Ryan “looked absolutely terrified” since he's “very physically fit” and “doesn't eat sweets.”

Paul Ryan has long been the darling of the conservative media and especially Fox News, which has praised Ryan as a “star,” a “genius,” and a man of “courage.” Fox News has also helped whitewash Ryan's record on issues like Medicare and his budget plan.

During his appearance on Kilmeade & Friends, Wallace confirmed the show's adoration of Ryan, with whom “we were always very impressed.”

“I feel like we kind of discovered him on Fox News Sunday,” Wallace told host Brian Kilmeade. “We had him on when he was, you know, not a terribly well-known member of Congress because we just kept hearing from people on Capitol Hill he's the smartest guy around and we were always very impressed and kept having him on.”

Wallace then explained how the show presented a dollar sign birthday cake to Ryan because they wanted a “photo-op” of him cutting “into the dollars because he's the big budget cutter.” The stunt didn't quite work out because “we found out that, you know, he's very physically fit and stuff that he doesn't eat sweets.”

Politico noted in an August 24 article that Ryan climbed the ladder “into the top tier of national Republican politics,” in part, by cultivating relationships with members of the conservative media.

From the September 27 edition of Fox News Radio's Kilmeade & Friends:

WALLACE: Yeah, I mean I feel like we kind of discovered him on Fox News Sunday. We had him on when he was, you know, not a terribly well-known member of Congress because we just kept hearing from people on Capitol Hill he's the smartest guy around and we were always very impressed and kept having him on. But just the way the schedules have worked out, this will be the first time since he's the running mate.

KILMEADE: By the way, I'm hearing reports that you gave him a birthday cake.

WALLACE: Well, no, we did it on the air.

KILMEADE: You did it on the air?

WALLACE: Well, do you know this story?

KILMEADE: Well, I think I remember seeing it. I'm trying to --

WALLACE: It was pretty horrible. What happened was -- so it turned out, we just found out, you know, the researchers do a lot of research and someone said, “Hey guess what, that day is going to be his birthday.” And we thought, well, it'd be a funny photo. This was long before he's, you know, the vice presidential running mate so at the end of the show, it's just kind of a stunt, and a photo-op, we bring out a cake, and the cake, it's like one of those sheet cakes, you know, long, big wide squares, but thin, and it's got a big dollar bill sign on it.

I said we should have it actually, you know, it should be, you know, in the shape, in the form of a dollar with, you know, Washington's face on it. But that apparently costs a dollar fifty extra, so we just had the dollar bill sign on it. 

Well we hand it to him and it's as if I had handed him a ticking time bomb. He looked absolutely terrified. We gave him, you know, a knife to cut it, thinking, well that's the shot. He's going to sit there and cut into the dollars because he's the big budget cutter, and he was completely undone and we found out that, you know, he's very physically fit and stuff that he doesn't eat sweets, which immediately makes me not trust him since I like my chocolate chip cookies. But in any case, it didn't go very well.