Maria Bartiromo didn’t even bother to wait for the 2024 election to pass before suggesting it could be stolen.
During an on-air conversation Wednesday morning with Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley, the MAGA loyalist Fox Business Network host suggested President Joe Biden can’t reasonably expect to win the 2024 election when his policies don’t seem to resonate with voters. She highlighted Wall Street Journal poll that found Donald Trump leading Biden in multiple swing states, using the question as a set-up to boost a new conspiracy theory about Democrats being forced to manipulate the election in order to help the president win re-election.
“How does Biden win?” Bartiromo asked the RNC chairman. “Republicans are talking about the potential of an election that is tampered with. Republicans are warning there is a Biden order—executive order—which allows illegal immigrants and felons to vote.”
That Republican “warning” invoked by Bartiromo is—as is often the case with the Fox star’s conspiracy theorizing—not rooted in reality. The executive order she mentioned is a 2021 order designed to expand voter registration efforts through the work of various federal agencies. “It is our duty to ensure that registering to vote and the act of voting be made simple and easy for all those eligible to do so,” reads the executive order, which features a clause instructing officials to inform formerly incarcerated people on any potential restrictions to their right to vote upon release from custody.
The order makes no mention of undocumented immigrants nor does it expand the right to vote to any groups previously unable to do so. The president does not have any authority to extend the right to vote to undocumented immigrants, and a 1996 federal law expressly prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections.
Bartiromo soft-peddling the newest conspiracy theory about Democrats rigging the 2024 vote, seven months before the actual election, would not be the first time she’s engaged in election-related obfuscations. Her repeated boosting of 2020 election lies on Fox’s airwaves made Bartiromo a key target in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against the conservative cable giant, which cost Fox News a whopping $787 million.
This latest, preemptive form of election denial escalated last month after Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson wrote a letter to the Justice Department claiming that Biden’s executive order “creates numerous opportunities” for non-citizens to vote. Watson claimed to Fox News last month that the programs created by the order are not discerning whether their outreach only snags eligible voters or is in accordance with state laws.
The order, however, makes sure to note that voter registration can only be provided “in a manner consistent with all relevant State laws,” and for the previously incarcerated at the time that their rights will be restored “under applicable State law.”
Bartiromo made no mention of the numerous fact–checks that found the conspiracy theory to be nonsense. And Whatley merely used the opportunity to tout the RNC’s fundraising accomplishments and a promise to get its message out “to the American voters.”
This post was originally published on Daily Beast
