Fox News Busted for Airing Blatant Election Lie Without Any Proof

Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo has repeatedly been saying this week that Democrats have been pushing to register “massive lines of illegals” to vote in Texas. As it turns out, she never did any actual reporting on the topic.

The Texas Department of Public Safety debunked Bartiromo’s claims, with Sergeant William Lockridge, a spokesperson for the department, calling the claims “simply false” and “kind of racist” in a statement Tuesday to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Brady Gray, the chairman of the Parker County GOP, also said such reports were “erroneous” after investigating Bartiromo’s claims.

Bartiromo first brought up the alleged voter registration in an X post on Sunday, citing a “friend of mine’s wife.” It turns out that this was all the sourcing that the Fox anchor needed to repeat the claim ad nauseum on TV.

Fox doesn’t seem to care much about the egregious lapse in journalistic practice, with a network spokesperson telling Zeteo media columnist Jason Baragona that Bartiromo was citing one of her sources but never said that she confirmed the story. And, as if to excuse repeating a claim without any proof, the spokesperson added that Republicans have repeatedly mentioned noncitizens voting in recent months.

That seems to be the only true statement from either Bartiromo or Fox: Republicans keep repeating that undocumented immigrants or noncitizens are illegally voting in the U.S. Several members of Congress and Republican candidates repeated the false claim at the Republican National Convention, where it made its way into the party platform. House Speaker Mike Johnson has even proposed a bill to tackle it based on bogus data.

It’s pretty obvious that the GOP is using the claim to appear even tougher on immigration and garner more votes in November. But, they have yet to offer any proof, and right-wing media is following their lead. Perhaps Fox and other conservative media outlets should remember all of the hefty legal settlements they’ve had to pay for peddling false information, especially when it comes to elections.

It’s been a tough month financially for the Republican Party, which may signal trouble for its presidential candidate, Donald Trump.

The RNC reported that it had raised nearly $31 million in July, nearly half of the $61 million it reported raising the month before, according to its most recent FEC filing. The party’s disbursements over the same period were more than $33 million, meaning that the party ended the month of its convention slightly more cash-poor than it started.

Trump’s campaign has said that it, and the Republican Party, had raised a combined $138 million in July.

Meanwhile, Kamala Harris’s historic fundraising surge has officially dwarfed the moneymaking efforts of Trump and the GOP. Since entering the race nearly one month ago, Harris has raised a staggering $500 million, across her campaign and other political entities, according to CNBC.

Harris raised $204 million in July alone—a whopping four times as much as the $48 million raised by Trump’s main fundraising group, Reuters reported.

Harris’s political operation and the Democratic Party’s main fundraising group were able to raise a combined $310 million in July, with more than $200 million raised within the first week of her candidacy, following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race. Harris’s team entered August with $377 million cash on hand, exceeding the $327 million held by Trump’s operation.

Donald Trump was an easy mark for Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Trump’s former national security adviser.

H.R. McMaster writes in his upcoming book, At War With Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House, that Putin used Trump’s “ego and insecurities” to influence Trump as president. The Guardian obtained an advance copy of the book, due to be released on August 27.

Trump infamously praised Putin throughout his presidential term, dismissed criticism from his staff of the Russian autocrat, and would fire McMaster as a result in 2018. The now-retired general spoke about Trump’s incomprehensible defenses of Putin in the book.

“After over a year in this job, I cannot understand Putin’s hold on Trump,” McMaster recalls telling his wife Katie in 2018 after the news that Putin’s agents had poisoned a Russian dissident in the United Kingdom, Sergei Skripal, along with his daughter. 

After the assassination attempt, as other world leaders sought to make a strong response to Putin, Trump was especially happy with a New York Post article headlined “Putin heaps praise on Trump, pans US politics,” writing a friendly note to the Russian president with a black Sharpie and asking McMaster “to get the clipping to Putin.”

“I was certain that Putin would use Trump’s annotated clipping to embarrass him and provide cover for the attack,” McMaster wrote in the book, adding that he handed the note over to a White House office that handles communications from the president.

“Later, as evidence mounted that the Kremlin, and very likely Putin himself had ordered the nerve agent attack on Skripal, I told them not to send it,” McMaster wrote.

McMaster wrote that “Putin, a ruthless former KGB operator, played to Trump’s ego and insecurities with flattery,” trying to drive a wedge between Trump and his staffers seeking a tougher stance against Russia.

“Putin had described Trump as ‘a very outstanding person, talented, without any doubt’, and Trump had revealed his vulnerability to this approach, his affinity for strongmen, and his belief that he alone could forge a good relationship with Putin,” wrote McMaster. “The fact that most foreign policy experts in Washington advocated for a tough approach to the Kremlin seemed only to drive the president to the opposite approach.”

Many of the generals and national security officials who served under Trump have had a falling out with the Republican presidential nominee. His former chief of staff, General John Kelly, said that Trump praised Adolf Hitler and made disparaging comments about veterans, calling them suckers and losers. Another former national security adviser, John Bolton, has said that Trump “can’t tell the difference between what’s true and what’s false.” If Trump is elected again, it’s all but guaranteed that he’ll put America’s safety and security at risk.

Oh, brother.

At an event Tuesday night, professional wrestler Hulk Hogan threatened Kamala Harris while making fun of her biracial background.

“Want me to body-slam Kamala Harris?” a noticeably drunk Hogan asked the crowd at an Ohio event promoting his new beer. “Want me to drop the weight on Kamala?”

Threatening the sitting vice president with violence wasn’t enough for the WWE star as he then moved to racist comments. “Is Kamala a chameleon? Is she Indian?” he asked.

Hogan, though famous for his body slam moves, is more well known recently in political circles for his legal battle with Gawker and for ripping his shirt off at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month.

Imagine if someone who spoke at the Democratic National Convention hit Trump with the same threat.

Hogan’s comments are also further proof that all of MAGA seems to have a problem recognizing biracial people. During Trump’s interview with the National Association of Black Journalists last month, the former president stated that for years, Harris “was Indian all the way, and then suddenly she made a turn and she became a Black person.”

Before blaming the beers on his outrageous comments, Hogan took the time to get one last racist jab in, shouting “how” and doing a stereotypical Native American greeting. Doing so, Hogan was trying to invoke tropes about Native American “Indians” to poke fun at Harris.

“I’m going to get heat for that one, brother,” said the wrestler, who was fired from the WWE after he was caught on tape using the N-word.

When it comes to support from young voters, Kamala Harris is absolutely pummeling former President Donald Trump, according to new polling.

Harris has surpassed Trump by a whopping 32 points among 18- to 29-years-olds living in seven battleground states as of Tuesday, according to polling from Voters of Tomorrow.

The poll surveyed more than 1,500 young voters in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, and Wisconsin between August 16 and August 20.

When deciding which candidate to support, the majority of respondents said they cared most about jobs, the economy, and the cost of living. When asked which candidate they trusted more to address this issue, the gap between the candidates significantly narrowed, with 38 percent saying Harris and 33 percent saying Trump.

Early on in her campaign, the vice president was able to establish an edge over her opponent, and a boost over her predecessor President Joe Biden. In a Biden-Trump race, the split among 18- to 34-year-olds was far more even, with 53 percent for Biden and 47 for Trump.

In a Harris-Trump race, the same group was split 60 percent for Harris and 40 for Trump, giving Harris a 20-point lead, according to an Axios/Generation Lab poll published last month. Since then, the gap between Harris and Trump has only grown.

Online, grassroots enthusiasm for Harris’s campaign began before she was even announced as the candidate, propelled by memes and fan edits created and disseminated by young internet users, who had begun urging Joe Biden to drop out of the race. Harris has been able to build her momentum among this group, which could translate into a surge at the polls—if Harris is able to address their policy concerns.

Voters of Tomorrow found that two-thirds of their poll respondents said that they were very likely or certain to vote in November’s election.