On November 11, Fox anchor Shannon Bream claimed that President-elect Joe Biden’s new chief of staff, Ron Klain, “has tweeted support for the idea that elections are rigged.” She added that “it seems both parties have some work to do to build trust back into our elections,” falsely suggesting a similarity between Klain’s tweet and completely baseless allegations of voter fraud or election fraud prevalent in conservative political media (including Fox News.)
But Klain’s tweet, like the Vox article it was in response to, criticized gerrymandered districts for unfairly benefiting incumbents. As the article explains in the second paragraph, “The problem here isn't fraud. In elections, like in so much else, the scandal is what's legal.” Despite later doing a fuller segment on Klain’s past opinions and jobs, Bream never mentioned this key context.
Fox News’ website published an article the following day which included the context in a subheadline, but it still sensationalized the story, describing “an old tweet written by Klain … coming back to haunt him” and promoted a misleading attack based on the same false comparison Bream pushed. A tweet from the Fox News account also suggested scandal with the oversimplified headline “Ronald Klain, Biden's new chief of staff, raises eyebrows with 2014 tweet saying elections are 'rigged.'”
There’s simply no comparison between legitimate criticisms of gerrymandering and baseless allegations of voter fraud or election fraud.
