As the Biden administration defends the president’s policy of canceling up to $20,000 of student debt for millions of Americans against a Republican-backed challenge before the Supreme Court, some right-wing commentators are going beyond their old arguments against the policy to make truly outrageous claims about it.

When President Joe Biden first announced his administration’s plan in August to address the very real problem of student debt doubling in the past decade, which affects tens of millions of Americans, conservatives tried arguing that the policy was unfair, would raise inflation, would favor the rich, and had no legal basis. 

But when arguments about the policy reached the Supreme Court yesterday, some right-wing media figures went far beyond their previous opposition to the policy and levied some egregious new attacks:

• Fox News host Mark Levin called Biden’s student loan cancellation policy “a fascistic act by an out-of-control man” who is “cheered by the Marxists in the country.”
• OutKick founder Clay Travis: “This was a transparent political attempt by Joe Biden to rig in his favor the 2022 election.”
• Travis again portrayed the student debt cancellation policy as a voter turnout scheme: Biden “wanted to drive up young voters’ turnout as much as he could.”
• Fox contributor Liz Peek: “You can't just dole out $400 billion to get votes, which is basically what this is all about.”
• Media Research Center’s Stephanie Hamill said “it’s almost like a bribery” of voters.
• Newsmax host Rob Schmitt said it’s a “vote-buying scheme” to get people “on the narcotic of social welfare.”
• Schmitt later portrayed student debt cancellation as Biden wanting “to dump hundreds of billions of dollars that we don't have on 8-balls, Jack Daniels, and flights to Mexico.”
• Fox contributor Marc Thiessen claimed student debt cancellation is “an act of stolen valor,” and that Biden is “turning millions of Americans into people who are engaged in stolen valor.”
• Turning Point USA President Charlie Kirk used student debt cancellation to attack college education in general, claiming he might not be so opposed if colleges were “producing fruit that loved America.” Instead, he said, they’re the “Wuhan Institute of Virology equivalent of idea pathogens in our country” and asked, “Is this a alleged money laundering scheme to pay off colleges for their Marxist indoctrination?”
• Kirk also wrote on Twitter that “college is a scam!”