Donald Trump and his allies are relentlessly pushing the lie that there’s reason for serious concern about the integrity of the recently concluded presidential election. In reality, the Department of Homeland Security itself has characterized the recent election as the “most secure election in American history” — but this recent public statement from officials at the department hasn’t exactly stopped Trump and his allies’ nonsensical conspiracy theories. During a Sunday segment on Fox News, journalist Eric Shawn shredded the Trumpian conspiracy theories about the election, even featuring testimony from a top Republican official in Philadelphia, who insisted that Trump’s claim that Republican observers were systematically blocked from ballot-counting rooms is false.
Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt, a Republican, told Shawn that Trump’s claim that “observers were not allowed in the counting rooms” is “totally untrue.” Shawn also asked Schmidt about the president’s feverish allegation that so-called “bad things” happened in ballot-counting rooms, and Schmidt insisted that the second allegation was also “absolutely not” true. Schmidt added that he hadn’t seen any evidence of local voter fraud. Trump and his allies have targeted Philadelphia and Detroit for steep criticism — and both cities have significant Black populations. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) has noted the apparent racism underlying the Trump team’s conspiracies.
Meanwhile, Shawn summarized the issue as follows:
‘Prosecutors say that any voter or election fraud allegation will be thoroughly investigated, and if the fix were in, if there was wrongdoing — we will know about it, but election officials across the country insist as of today there is no evidence of any widespread fraud affecting the outcome of the presidential election — that our precious democracy was not tampered with, and that such baseless and false claims are an insult to the thousands of election officials and workers across the country who we have seen dedicated themselves 24/7 to ensure a fair and free election for all of us.’
Watch the segment below:
Must watch!
After Maria Bartiromo devoted her entire show this morning to promoting Trump's Dominion conspiracy, Fox News anchor Eric Shawn debunks it and other voter fraud claims, declaring that "such baseless and false claims are an insult" to election officials and workers. pic.twitter.com/ksM2hGIJqn
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) November 15, 2020
No matter Shawn’s refutation of the Trump team’s lies, Fox News continues to provide a platform for dangerous conspiracy theories in some of its other programs. In a Sunday morning edition of the Fox News program Sunday Morning Futures with host Maria Bartiromo, Trump lawyer Sidney Powell made the totally unhinged assertion that Trump actually won the recent presidential election by millions of votes, which just isn’t at all true. She might as well have said that Martians have now taken over Canada. There is no meaningful real-world evidence for the allegation that hundreds of thousands or even millions of votes are invalid. Again — the Department of Homeland Security itself has unequivocally confirmed as much.
