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.”