Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo repeatedly used her show to peddle an election fraud conspiracy theory that she claimed originated with the wife of a friend of a friend in Texas and that she made no apparent effort to confirm. When the Texas Department of Public Safety and the local Republican Party investigated her reckless allegation, however, they discovered that none of it was true.
Last Sunday, Bartiromo posted an item on X alleging that “a massive line of immigrants” had been obtaining driver’s licenses and registering to vote at three Department of Motor Vehicles offices in Texas. The next day, Bartiromo brought this wildly flimsy allegation to the Fox airwaves, having apparently done no independent reporting to confirm that claims that she said originated with the wife of a friend of her friend. Of course, this claim was patently false.
Bartiromo has a long history of promoting wild claims about election fraud. During the 2020 election, she hosted Trumpist lawyer Sidney Powell to baselessly allege that Dominion Voting Systems had rigged the vote against Donald Trump. Bartiromo’s Dominion segments were featured in the company’s defamation lawsuit against vote, which resulted in her network paying a record settlement. But they had no apparent impact on her standing at Fox: she retains a weekly Fox News show and a three-hour weekday show on Fox Business.
Media Matters’ Matt Gertz notes that Fox’s response to Bartiromo “peddling thirdhand election fraud falsehoods she didn’t bother to check demonstrates how the network has abandoned anything resembling journalistic standards in its quest to return Donald Trump to the White House.”
At an August 15 campaign event, Donald Trump claimed that the Presidential Medal of Freedom he awarded to a Republican billionaire is “much better” than the Medal of Honor awarded to service members because those receipts are either injured or dead compared to his “healthy, beautiful” donor. Fox News had not aired Trump’s comments a single time as of 1 p.m. August 19.
For years, Fox has frequently defended or outright ignored Trump’s offensive comments about those who have served in the military. During his 2016 campaign, Trump attacked a Gold Star family and also attacked then-Arizona Sen John McCain, saying, “I like people who weren’t captured.” His chief of staff confirmed reports that Trump called fallen soldiers “suckers” and “losers” and canceled a visit to honor American war dead in 2018.
Meanwhile, Fox has a long history of melting down about perceived slights to the military coming from Democrats. In 2014, Fox freaked out over Barack Obama saluting two Marines while holding a coffee cup. Fox has been smearing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s 24 years of service ever since Kamala Harris named him as her running mate, pushing false claims of “stolen valor.”
The hypocrisy is clear. If a Democrat had said even a tenth of what Trump has said about veterans, Fox personalities would be undergoing a historic meltdown. Instead, they’re merely serving their leader’s ambitions for the presidency.
Numerous Project 2025 groups have claimed over the years that abortion is comparable to or even worse than the Holocaust. Those partners have called abortion the “American Holocaust”; said that “someday, abortion will be viewed historically as a modern-day Holocaust, maybe even worse”; and claimed that “America’s holocaust against the unborn makes Hitler’s holocaust pale in comparison.”
We’ve told you before that Project 2025’s proposals include extreme rollbacks to reproductive rights, including access to surrogacy, IVF, mifepristone, and contraception. Recently we’ve documented that numerous Project 2025 groups have also pushed the false claim that abortions are never medically necessary.
Project 2025 is closely tied to Donald Trump and JD Vance, who wrote the foreword for Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts’ book.
