Fox “news”-side anchors praise Bill Barr's harshly criticized remarks about voting and the election
In interview on Chicago radio station, Barr both accused liberals of “projecting” about fears of Trump cheating to stay in power — and accused Democrats of cheating with mail-in votes. Fox News anchors then echoed the same rhetorical sleight of hand.
Published
Citation From the September 16, 2020, edition of Fox News’ Bill Hemmer Reports
BILL HEMMER (ANCHOR): Bill Barr did an interview —
MARTHA MACCALLUM (ANCHOR, The Story with Martha MacCallum): He sure did.
HEMMER: — with a reporter from Chicago. It's only on audio, but here is part of what he said about voting and what could happen after Election Day.
(BEGIN CLIP)
WILLIAM BARR (U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL): You know, liberals project. You know, “The president is going to stay in office, and seize power,” and all that bull----.
JOHN KASS (HOST, The Chicago Way with John Kass): Fascism.
BARR: I've never heard of that crap. I mean, I'm the attorney general, I would think I would've heard of it, OK. They're projecting. They're creating an incendiary situation, where there's going to be loss of confidence in the vote.
(END CLIP)
HEMMER: What he's describing here is what he calls the so-called resistance. You heard his comments.
MACCALLUM: Yeah.
HEMMER: He offered quite a bit —
MACCALLUM: He did.
HEMMER: Especially for an attorney general.
MACCALLUM: You know, I think that Bill Barr is someone who speaks honestly and shares what he thinks. He's obviously very frustrated with the storylines that he's seen coming out. Because at the heart of them, they undermine the U.S. electoral system and people's faith in it, which I think, Bill, is deteriorating.
You know, I think about growing up, and people talking about elections in Eastern Bloc countries and places where you couldn't count on the outcome, that there was reason to think that there was so much corruption that you couldn't trust the outcome. It was something that we've never worried about in this country. And I think that there are efforts to undermine that confidence, and I think that's a very serious, worrisome trend.
And he also talked about the, you know, sort of capricious distribution of ballots — harvesting and undue influence, when you've got these universal ballots that are sent out to every single person in the state. There's a deliberate act of walking into the voting booth, of checking your signature in that book next to the name — or at the very least, of signing up for an absentee ballot that comes to you. So, I think that he's hitting on something that is of real, substantive concern.
HEMMER: He talked about it without really being prompted, almost as if he seemed to offer the answers he gave. And you know, the mail-in balloting, he has significant concerns about it.