Fox News knows it is promoting dangerous lies, just like it did with the 2020 election, but this time it’s about Hurricane Helene disaster relief and immigrants.
Media Matters has the deets and the receipts. The biggest receipt comes from Fox News’ senior congressional correspondent, Chad Pergram. As Media Matters noted, Pergram got a big scoop Tuesday night. He announced it on Twitter:
Fox has obtained a fact sheet assembled by the majority side of House Appropriations Committee about disaster aid.
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) October 9, 2024
It says that FEMA “has enough funding in the short-term to address immediate needs for both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.”
It also declares there is “no…
The third paragraph, truncated in the above tweet, reads, "It also declares there is 'no funding connection between' the migrant shelter program and the Disaster Relief Fund. It adds there is 'no intermingling of funding between these two programs.' It adds that 'the only connection is that both programs are administered by FEMA.'”
Unfortunately for Pergram, this debunks the lies of their (presumably) favorite p***y grabber, Donald Trump.
Media Matters explains:
The fact sheet as Pergram reported it amounts to a damning repudiation of former President Donald Trump’s lies about the federal response. On the campaign trail, Trump has falsely claimed that the Biden administration “stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season,” and that Vice President Kamala Harris spent “all her FEMA money” housing immigrants.
So, what does a propaganda network do when faced with such inconvenient truth? Just like the propagandists did when they knew Trump hadn’t really won the 2020 presidential election: They ignore the facts and push MAGA lies anyway.
Media Matters listed several examples of Fox not allowing their own reporter’s fact-finding to interfere with its propaganda. Here’s a sample:
- On Wednesday morning, Fox News continued to push the falsehood on Fox & Friends, with contributor Miranda Devine claiming that “FEMA was handing out money to illegal migrants instead of keeping it for hurricane victims.
- That evening on Fox’s flagship “news” show, Special Report anchor Bret Baier did not reference the GOP fact sheet but mentioned in passing that there has been a “back and forth about FEMA money going to immigrants, there is a pot, it’s just different than the disaster pot where the money comes from.”
- The network’s high-rated evening Trumpist propagandists all continued to claim money that should have gone to disaster aid went instead to migrants on Wednesday night. Laura Ingraham claimed FEMA money had gone to “sheltering migrants” that “should be spent and allocated to shoring up disaster management for Americans, not on illegal aliens.” Watters claimed that “FEMA admitted they wasted a billion on migrants” and that the agency had been “leaving Americans hanging, but bending over backwards to help foreigners who broke into the country.” And Sean Hannity said the Biden administration claimed to be running out of funds for disaster aid after FEMA “distributed more than a billion dollars to house and feed Harris and Biden unvetted illegal immigrants.”
People died as the result of Trump’s 2020 election lies. Fox had to pay $787.5 million for promoting them and may well have to pay millions more.
Clearly, the network just doesn’t care.
You can watch Laura Ingraham claiming that “billions and billions” of dollars went to “illegal aliens” rather than Americans, below, from the October 9, 2024 The Ingraham Angle, via Media Matters.
