Whenever you see Monica Crowley on Fox News, you can count on her providing at least one unsubstantiated conspiracy theory. Last night, she came up with a bigoted conspiracy theory about African American Muslim Keith Ellison that host Laura Ingraham did not challenge.
After Crowley was outed as a plagiarist and was forced to resign from the Trump administration (before it officially started), Fox News apparently did not rehire her. However, that has not stopped the network from repeatedly booking her as a supposedly credible pundit.
But long before Crowley’s plagiarism came to light, her inflammatory, baseless conspiracy theories were in plain sight on the airwaves:
She accused CBS’ Bob Schieffer of offering secretly-coded campaign suggestions to Obama advisor David Axelrod (October 12, 2010).
She has opined that the War on Christmas is really part of a secular progressive plot to “strip organized religion, God and faith out of the public square” so that government can step in and “fill that void” (November 27, 2012).
She hyped the baseless conspiracy theory that DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered by the Clintons (August 10, 2016).
And my personal favorite: that time she blamed the Obama administration for her decision not to eat a cheeseburger (June 28, 2011).
Last night, Crowley joined The Ingraham Angle to attack Democrats for not immediately condemning Ellison, the Democratic candidate for Minnesota attorney general, in the wake of accusations of physical and emotional abuse of two ex-girlfriends. Predictably, host Laura Ingraham did not note that Ellison has vehemently denied the accusations and that there is no reliable evidence against him:
In the recent case, for example, reporters at local and national outlets haven’t been able to review evidence [ex-girlfriend Karen] Monahan herself has pointed to — and thereby confirm whether the alleged abuse took place. Monahan has said she won’t release the video that her son described in the Facebook post. And while she has released dozens of text messages she and Ellison sent to each other, they don’t specifically corroborate violence or verbal abuse. Some texts are obviously cropped in the middle of an exchange.
[Another accusatory ex, Amy] Alexander ended up in a legal battle with Ellison when he took her to court to get a restraining order, which a judge granted to him. Her counter-request was denied.
Instead of giving a full picture of the situation, Ingraham used Ellison’s primary win last night as an excuse to demonize Democrats. This is how she opened the discussion:
INGRAHAM: The Democrats love to talk about a Stormy Daniels or anyone else associated with an accusation against President Trump. But what about deputy DNC chair Keith Ellison, who is defending himself now against accusations that he physically and emotionally abused an ex-girlfriend? So now it’s innocent until proven guilty? OK.
The DNC was shamed into commenting on the matter today, telling NPR, “These allegations recently came to light and we are reviewing them. All allegations of domestic abuse are disturbing and should be taken seriously. And Ellison just moments ago won his Democratic primary in an attempt to become the Minnesota attorney general.
Crowley either couldn’t be bothered with the facts or else she ignored them. She got right to her latest conspiracy theory in her response:
CROWLEY: Look, the Me Too Movement has claimed a lot of very powerful scalps on both sides of the aisle and you look back and you wonder, well, Al Franken went down in flames. John Conyers went down in flames. We have a lot of people again, on both sides of the aisle, have essentially been destroyed by past actions and accusations and so on.
So, what is different in the Keith Ellison case? Well, could it be that the DNC and the Democrats have chosen to protest Keith Ellison, trying to promote him, because he checks two boxes: he is African-American and he’s a Muslim?
Ingraham did not challenge this baseless, bigoted accusation.
Watch Crowley’s latest conspiracy theory below, from the August 14, 2018 The Ingraham Angle.