Fox News “hard news” anchor Harris Faulkner on Monday allowed Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) to peddle baseless claims that the election was “stolen” from President Donald Trump, offering no pushback while calling his planned attempt to subvert the will of the people “fascinating.”
To make matters worse, the official Twitter account of her program Outnumbered Overtime promoted the interview by using the hashtag “#stopthesteal,” which has become the rallying cry of the Trump campaign’s attempt to overthrow President-elect Joe Biden’s decisive victory.
With the president’s “elite strike force” legal team racking up loss after loss in its increasingly futile effort to overturn last month’s election results, Brooks—one of Trump’s top sycophants in Congress—has hit upon another longshot plan to keep the president in office. Citing the president’s unfounded conspiracies of widespread voter fraud, Brooks revealed last week that he will challenge the Electoral College voters when Congress meets next month.
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Asked by Faulkner why he’s challenging the results, the Alabama congressman insisted it is because “the election was stolen” and that the “evidence is overwhelming that if only lawful votes” were counted, Trump “won the Electoral College” and would remain president.
After seemingly mixing up Brooks’ home state of Alabama with Georgia when noting his state “certified the election” for Biden, Faulkner went on to ask how he planned to move forward with his challenge. The conservative lawmaker noted that he was only interested in rejecting the electoral votes of states that went for the president-elect.
“Now, I’m not suggesting a rejection of all Electoral College submissions of all states,” Brooks exclaimed. “I’m focused on ones that have election systems that are so badly flawed as to render the reported results untrustworthy in which case we should not ratify an untrustworthy election system. We should reject it.”
Rather than express a bit of skepticism and press Brooks to present evidence to back up his outlandish allegations of election theft, Faulkner appeared enthralled by the congressman’s remarks while contrasting them positively with Team Trump’s blatant coup attempt.
“That’s fascinating,” she declared. “So you’re looking specifically where the Trump campaign and others have pressed forth legal movement—you’re following that trail to see what things are broken or irregular and so on and so forth.”
Faulkner also brought up a recent op-ed that argued Brooks’ effort was dead in the water, asking him to respond. The far-right lawmaker said he acknowledged it was “an uphill fight” before again insisting he was moving forward so “this kind of election theft and voter fraud does not happen again.”
“Wow, Congressman Mo Brooks. It is fascinating to hear this because the implications for the future is what you are focused on,” an impressed Faulkner replied, concluding the interview.
Moments later, meanwhile, the show’s official Twitter account sent out its #stopthesteal tweet to promote the segment:
While Fox News’ “straight news” personalities have continued to refer to Biden as president-elect since the network drew the ire of Trump and his supporters by calling the election for the ex-veep last month, Fox’s news division has increasingly lent more and more credence to Trump’s unproven “rigged” election claims over the past few weeks.
