Eric Bolling becomes a regular on One America News
Among his five OAN appearances since leaving Sinclair, Bolling has pushed ‘great replacement’ theory, complained about being called racist, and accused Anthony Fauci of “stolen valor”
Written by Bobby Lewis
Published
Eric Bolling, the former chief political anchor for Sinclair Broadcast Group, is beginning to appear on One America News after he parted ways with Sinclair on January 31. Bolling’s Sinclair show, America This Week, was perhaps best known for spreading misinformation about COVID-19, vaccines, and the 2020 election and its fallout. A review by Media Matters found that Bolling has appeared on OAN at least five times since March 22, continuing to build up his brand of lies on yet another right-wing network.
Bolling wound up at Sinclair after Fox News fired him in 2017 for reportedly sending unsolicited explicit images to coworkers. His Sinclair show infamously platformed a doctor from the Plandemic COVID-19 conspiracy theory movie, in addition to spreading coronavirus misinformation since the beginning of the pandemic; it was ultimately forced to edit two such misleading segments after Media Matters’ reporting. As host of America This Week, Bolling also undermined confidence in vote-by-mail efforts prior to the 2020 election, promoted a debunked conspiracy theory about Wisconsin ballots, and hosted podcaster and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon to push a conspiracy theory about Dominion Voting Systems, which has since resulted in defamation lawsuits against other promoters of the false theory in right-wing media, potentially including OAN.
Bolling’s first OAN appearance since leaving Sinclair came on the March 22 debut episode of The Real Story with Natalie Harp, where he pushed a version of the “replacement theory,” a white nationalist trope and an increasingly common right-wing media talking point. Bolling alleged that Biden is encouraging undocumented immigration because 80% of the undocumented immigrants currently here are “Democrat voters that they want to get into the system.” “Combine that," Bolling continued, with an “army” of migrants coming over the border means “this country’s going to be flooded with drugs. The country’s going to get flooded with disease. The country’s going to be flooded with people who won’t pay for health care, won’t pay for school, we’re going to give them everything. … There will never be another Republican president in America, if they do this.”
When Bolling takes a break from being racist or complaining at length about presidential son Hunter Biden or Major League Baseball, he has used his OAN airtime to accuse Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauci of “stolen valor” for taking credit away from former President Donald Trump on vaccine development and distribution.
Continuing the grievance throughline, Bolling most recently went on OAN to defend himself after storming out of a BBC interview because his fellow guest called him racist. On April 10, Bolling complained that he was “just citing facts'' when political commentator Aisha Mills suggested “that I somehow am racist because I’m a white male -- and not just a white person, a white male.” Bolling said he welcomes criticism from “the race brokers” and “race merchants” because “my immediate family has diversity beyond what they can even imagine in it, right now, as we speak. … If they want to continue to attack me, we’ll have that argument.” Bolling accused Mills of “defining racism right there in America” by suggesting that “I’m a racist simply because of the color of my skin.” He then went on to defend the phrase “all lives matter” and complain that “everything is now a race card, everything is a race back-and-forth” thanks to “people like Aisha Mills.”
Bolling has had a long career in right-wing media as a racist and conspiracy theorist, slipping further and further into the fever swamps for content and relevance. Whether as a recurring guest or an eventual employee, he would be a fitting addition to a network as bigoted as One America News.