One of Fox News’ so-called “hard-news” anchors allowed prominent conservative lobbyist Matt Schlapp to spew Trump-like voter-fraud conspiracy theories Wednesday morning without any pushback, despite Schlapp openly accusing Democrats of trying to “run up the tally” by having undocumented immigrants vote.
Reacting to calls by Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren to abolish the Electoral College, Schlapp told America’s Newsroom anchor Sandra Smith that the Democratic Party is “embracing radicalism and socialism,” adding that Democrats were playing to “racial politics” and the “cultures and values of the big urban areas.”
Smith noted that fellow Democratic candidate Kamala Harris said that she was also “open” to getting rid of the electoral vote system, stating that Harris believes the “popular vote has been diminished.” (In two of the last five presidential elections, the popular vote winner—Democrats both times—has lost.)
ADVERTISEMENT
“Will it be a winning message for them?” Smith asked.
From there, Schlapp, whose wife works in the White House, fired off a series of debunked myths and half-truths about voter fraud that appeared to come directly from the president’s Twitter feed.
“You know why the popular vote has been diminished?” Schlapp exclaimed. “It’s because you literally have Democrats who want to have an open southern border. They don’t want to have borders in our country.”
The American Conservative Union chair continued: “When people get released into the interior of our country and they’re here illegally, they want to give them a credential like a driver’s license and the Kamala Harris’ home state of California they have changed all the voting rules so it is very easy for people who are not on the voting rolls to vote or people remain on the voting rolls after they’re dead or after they're no longer eligible to vote.”
This has been a favorite talking point of President Trump’s for years now, largely to brush off his popular vote defeat in the 2016 election. The reality, however, is that “millions and millions” of illegal voters did not cast votes, as the president has claimed over and over again. Instead, Trump’s own Justice Department found only 19 cases of foreign nationals illegally voting in the 2016 election.
Schlapp went on to assert that Democrats do not want “one person/one vote” but instead want to use the popular vote in the presidential election to “run up the tally through these means that most Americans find repugnant.” He concluded by glossing over the Republican absentee ballot scandal in North Carolina to accuse Democrats of playing “games” with mail-in ballots.
Smith, meanwhile, merely moved on to her next series of questions about the Democratic candidates, apparently deciding there was no need for any follow-up.
