Eric Bolling's Fox Business Show: Going Out Ugly

Fox Business announced last week that it is ending its current prime-time lineup, meaning that Eric Bolling's show Follow the Money will soon reach its conclusion. On Monday, perhaps in anticipation of the end, Bolling delivered in one three-minute period a stream of the casual slander and glib repetition of falsehoods that have defined the program.

Bolling began by suggesting that President Obama is a traitor. Bolling said, “President Obama, when he was campaigner Obama, Senator Obama, said the debt increase under President Bush was, quote, 'unpatriotic.' In three years, he's exceeded eight years' worth of Bush debt, meaning President Obama. So if Bush was unpatriotic, can't we kind of conclude that President Obama is treasonous?”

His guest, Fox News political analyst Kirsten Powers, declined to participate in his “name-calling” and said that President Bush had spent money with “no clear purpose,” using the Iraq war as an example.

Bolling responded by repeating one the most discredited right-wing myths of the past decade: the completely debunked claim that Saddam Hussein and Iraq were connected to the attacks of 9/11.

POWERS: I'm not big into the name-calling, Eric, so I won't do that. But I do think that there could be an argument made that Obama spent more money because we were in economic crisis and that they felt that they needed to stimulate the economy versus the -- President Bush was just spending money and with no clear purpose, as far as I can tell.

BOLLING: Wait, wait. Hold on, hold on, hold on.

POWERS: OK.

BOLLING: “No clear purpose”? How about protecting America? I mean, September 11, 2001 --

POWERS: Oh yeah? Yeah?

BOLLING: -- we woke up and we realized we better do something or these attacks could have continued on American soil.

POWERS: Oh, so we invaded a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. Yeah, that was a good use of money, Eric. I mean, you still are supporting that?

BOLLING: Wait, wait, wait. You're saying we invaded a country that had nothing to do with 9/11? I think it had all the footsteps right back to --

POWERS: Iraq?

BOLLING: -- right back to Saddam Hussein, right back to Osama bin Laden.

POWERS: That's ridiculous. [emphasis added]

Bolling then began invoking his personal connection to people who died on 9/11 to support his argument:

BOLLING: Are you kidding me, Kirsten? Really?

POWES: That is absolutely ridiculous.

BOLLING: I lost a lot of friends in 9/11. Please don't go here with me. I just don't want to --

POWERS: That is ri-diculous.

BOLLING: Do you really want to do this again?

POWERS: To suggest that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 is absolutely absurd.

BOLLING: They were sponsors of terror.

POWERS: It is not -- and it was a terrible waste of money and lives.

BOLLING: They were sponsors of terror, as were Ahmadinejad in Iran. I mean, please, Kirsten. You and I -- maybe you didn't know anyone who died in 9-11. I knew a lot of them. I comforted family members of good friends of mine who died.

POWERS: You do not -- you know what? You do not hold the, like --

BOLLING: Please don't say that, please don't say that.

POWERS: -- because you know somebody who died in 9/11, which -- I actually do know people who died in 9/11. You do not use that as a -- to say that, like, your policy point trumps somebody else's policy point. Everybody cares about what happened in 9/11.

BOLLING: I'm not -- I'm simply saying --

POWERS: Iraq did not have anything to do with 9/11. [emphasis added]

Bolling went on to employ another falsehood to defend the Bush era: the incorrect claim that there were no domestic terrorist attacks under Bush after 9-11:

BOLLING: I'm simply saying at that moment, the Bush administration said, “We better do something, we better make this place, this country a safer place to live.” And you know what? After 9/11, they did, Kirsten. There were no terrorist attacks on American soil.

POWERS: They -- attacking Iraq had nothing to do with that.

BOLLING: So what you call wasted money, spending money for no reason --

POWERS: Wasted money and wasted lives, yeah. Yeah.

BOLLING: -- I call it spending money for the most important reason on the face of the earth: keeping my kids safe.

POWERS: If it was keeping people safe, it would be important. It had nothing to do with keeping people safe. Zero, zip, nada. Nothing. It was a waste of money and a waste of human lives.

BOLLING: Interesting. All right. I guess we'll have to leave it there. Kirsten, enjoy having you on, though.

POWERS: Thank you. [emphasis added]