To say that Fox News host Maria Bartiromo is fact-impaired and that she likes to use fear tactics could easily be one of the understatements of the year. The frequently weepy-eyed anchor has done it again, this time by reawakening the Big Lie, suggesting that the 2024 election could be stolen from Donald Trump, ( or “stollen” as he seems to prefer).
And jeebers, why tell an actual, boring fact when you can tell a much-hyped lie to illustrate your point? On Wednesday morning, Bartiromo was talking to Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley, frequent Trump brown-noser and Fox Business Network host, when she suggested President Joe Biden can’t be expected to win the 2024 election when his policies, (according to her) aren’t popular with voters, according to The Daily Beast. Bartiromo referred to a Wall Street Journal poll that showed Trump leading President Joe Biden in multiple swing states, and she used that as a jumping-off point to set-up and promote a new conspiracy about Democrats being forced to manipulate the election so that Biden will win re-election.
She asked Whatley the big, bad scary (and incorrect) question “How does Biden win? Republicans are talking about the potential of an election that is tampered with. Republicans are warning there is a Biden order—executive order—which allows illegal immigrants and felons to vote.”
This is so wrong, wrongity-wrong that it’s almost hard to know where to begin but I’ll give it my best shot.
The New Civil Rights Movement reports that the WSJ poll showed “Trump leading Biden in six out of seven states, that’s Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania. In Wisconsin, the two are tied in a head-to-head matchup. So how does Biden win? Republicans are warning that there’s a Biden order, executive order, which allows illegal immigrants and felons to vote.”
This bit of dumbness purportedly comes from Mississippi’s Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson who hatched this conspiracy theory three years ago. He floated this again last month, because why not keep flogging a dead horse if it helps get folks all stirred up to believe your incorrect nonsense?
Fox News, which eats this stuff up, reported some weeks ago that Watson sent the U.S. Department of Justice a letter “asking it to stop enforcing a Biden executive order that he warns is being used to attempt to register ineligible convicts and illegal immigrants to vote.”
It’s always peculiar when people like Watson refer to an existent executive order as saying one thing when it actually says something else.
“as you are aware, on march 7, 2021, president biden issued executive order no. 14019 which sought to turn the Department of justice agencies from their historical missions of law enforcement to voter registration and get out the vote operations,” Watson wrote, per Fox News. “these efforts are an intrusion into state matters and are a misuse of federal revenue and resources. in addition, it appears that these efforts have led to agencies under your charge attempting to register people to vote, including potentially ineligible felons and to co-opt state and local officials into accomplishing this goal.”
But the fact-checking website Verify makes clear just how uninformed Watson is.
“No, Biden’s executive order doesn’t allow ineligible people to vote,” and also reports it’s “not true” that Biden’s order “would make it easier for ineligible people to vote.”
And A fact-check from USA Today makes the same point: “No, Biden didn’t (and can’t) allow immigrants in US illegally to vote.”
“experts said the claim is nonsense. Biden has issued no such order, and he does not have the power to decide who votes,” the newspaper reports, adding “in 1996, Congress made it illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections.”
Of course, Bartiromo excels at propelling new conspiracy theories about Democrats trying to gin up the 2024 vote, seven months before election day rolls around. She’s done this before, after all, this isn’t the first time she’s dabbled in such obfuscations. She repeatedly shared 2020 election lies on Fox News and that resulted in her becoming a key target in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation against the conservative news giant. This ultimately cost Fox News a whopping $787 million.
I can’t help but wonder how Bartiromo held on to her job, but then I remember this is Fox News, after all. Of course, she could wind up on X, like Tucker Carlson did. There’s also Newsmax and OAN, which might be more suitable places for her to hype completely incorrect conspiracy theories.
Here’s a clip of her idiocy below.
Maria Bartiromo discusses tight presidential campaign polling, then suggests the results will be "tampered with" to ensure a Trump loss pic.twitter.com/N3RN929Wo0
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 3, 2024
yeah babe, that “Trusting Women” to make their own healthcare decisions, that’s a real loser. How much was this idiot tw*t into the liquor bottle when she went on the air with this one? I would put all the money/assets I have or will ever have against one doughnut she thinks, perhaps even said, idiot boy’s s.c. picks who over-turned Roe, thereby allowing him to say (as he often does) he got rid of Roe IS an actual winning issue. How many elections have ‘pubes lost and how many ballot measures/constitutional amendments have won that codify/protect abortion in the states have won? Hmmmmm? Yeah, former guy as all the winning issues/policies. Yep. In her special little universe I guess.