Fox & Friends didn’t just lob softballs for Georgia runoff candidate Sen. Kelly Loeffler, they avoided altogether any pesky questions about a campaign photo in which she posed with a white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan leader, Chester Doles. Also erased was her stock-trading scandal.
On Friday, Loeffler (R-GA), running for re-election in a January runoff that could decide control of the U.S. Senate, and who had insisted just five days earlier, "There is not a racist bone in my body," posed for a smiling photo with Doles.
ALERT: Kelly Loeffler just posed for a photo with Chester Doles, a former KKK leader who runs the white supremacist American Patriots USA.
— Bend the Arc: Jewish Action (@jewishaction) December 13, 2020
In 1993, Doles nearly beat a Black man to death.
In 2017, he marched in Charlottesville.
This is who @KLoeffler is proudly appealing to. pic.twitter.com/4YZcvL05rf
Today, as The Washington Post reported, Loeffer claimed she had “no idea” Doles was a former KKK leader, despite his long, well-documented history of white supremacism.
Loeffler, likely the wealthiest member of Congress, with a net worth estimated to be at least $800 million, has also claimed ignorance when she made millions in a series of suspiciously fortunate stock trades following a private COVID-19 briefing for U.S. senators in January, just as the pandemic was beginning to take hold. She dodged a debate question last week about whether senators should be allowed to trade stocks.
But Loeffler didn’t have to claim ignorance or do any dodging on Fox & Friends this morning.
With early voting in the state starting today, Loeffler called Georgia “the firewall to socialism.”
Cohost and “tough journalist” Ainsley Earhardt warned Democrats are “a well-oiled machine.” She added, “These Democrats with the mail-in votes. How do you go up against that and win?”
FACT CHECK: Georgia Republicans are now encouraging mail-in ballots.
Loeffler didn’t mention that. “We’ve built a robust organization to make sure that voters have confidence in our elections,” she said, and she’s in court for “more signature verification.” She added, “We’ve also brought in 4,000 additional poll watchers because it’s so important that only legal votes are counted, and that all illegal votes are thrown out. There are 250 open investigations now into the November 3rd election here in Georgia, including an organization run by my opponent, Raphael Warnock, and Stacey Abrams.”
Loeffler also claimed “Democrats have blocked [COVID] relief time and again for hard working families.” Nobody mentioned that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConell is the one blocking COVID-19 relief bills.
Cohost Steve Doocy mentioned that both of Georgia’s (Republican) Senators “did back the Texas lawsuit before the Supreme Court that essentially said states like yours screwed up the election.” He asked Loeffler, “What can you say to [Georgia voters], they’ve heard the election was rigged in November so why vote now? … What’s different now than it was in November where it’s no longer rigged?”
“We’re in the courts right now asking for better signature verification processes, a bipartisan verification, to have consistent verification county to county,” Loeffler said. But her stronger response was to ratchet up more hatred and fear of Democrats, with a lie: “You saw in my debate last week, I’m running against the most radically liberal candidate that has ever run for the Senate. He’s someone that would defund the police, he refused to renounce socialism.”
FACT CHECK: Rev. Warnock opposes defunding the police.
Not surprisingly, not one of the three cohosts corrected the record.
You can watch Loeffler’s lapdogs in action below, from the December 14, 2020 Fox & Friends.