Fox News and Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo spent nearly six minutes helping Governor Pat McCrory (R-NC) fight his tough reelection battle and pushing controversies over his state’s “bathroom bill” and racist voter suppression efforts down a GOP memory hole.
In case you’ve forgotten, North Carolina’s HB2, dubbed the “bathroom bill” because it prohibits trangendered people from using public bathrooms in accordance with their gender identities, also made it illegal for local governments to pass anti-discrimination laws protecting LGBT people. Backlash against the bill, which McCrory supports, has cost the state hundreds of millions. But Bartiromo gushed over his business record without mentioning a word about the bill's costly consequencees:
BARTIROMO: I was interested in talking to you because I know that you’ve really been focused on the economy quite a bit there in North Carolina. Things are a lot better under your watch and we know that you signed tax reform into law which put more money in the paychecks of hard-working families. That’s one of the issues that we’re talking about in this campaign: Tax reform and economic growth that has been very hard to come by.
Bartiromo did find time to point a finger at the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) as an economic problem. She said, “Of course, we know that this has been one of the issues that has held back the economy because businesses are reluctant to create new positions because it’s too expensive with ObamaCare and the requirement to add benefits.”
Putting aside Bartiromo’s complete lack of regard for people trying to get health insurance without the Affordable Care Act, her claim that it has damaged the economy is questionable at best. In 2013, the Congressional Budget Office found that it’s not a job killer. Business Insider reported that the Act has actually benefitted the economy by both increasing consumer spending on health care and by causing an increase in jobs in the health care sector.
After a predictably partisan answer from McCrory and a predictable lack of challenge or even probing from Bartiromo, she wondered if the latest developments in Clinton’s emails will affect the election.
Yes, McCrory thought so.
MCCRORY: I think more than anything it might impact the turnout. …We’re already seeing the Clinton voters not coming out in numbers that the Obama voters were coming out four years ago at this point in time. I think the turnout will be impacted by this because people are just disgusted with the whole thing. And I think there is Clinton fatigue.
The depressed turnout could also be the result of the state's voter suppression efforts. As the New York Times noted,
Barely one month after a federal appeals court struck down the state’s anti-voter law for suppressing African-American voter turnout “with almost surgical precision,” election officials in dozens of counties [took up] new ways to make it as hard as possible for blacks, and others who tend to support Democrats, to vote.
But of course, Bartiromo didn’t mention that, either.
Watch her lapdog interview below, from the October 30, 2016 Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.
(H/T Raw Story)
What I see is a corollary to the other despicable female mindset (generally drummed into them by grasping mothers) that makes some women have the mission in life of catching a rich husband, any rich husband.
Reminds me of one of my all-time UK favourites, the recently deceased Caroline Ahern, who was interviewing the beautiful young wife of a 70+ TV hypnotist and asked “So what was it that first attracted you to multi-millionaire Paul Daniels?”
