At CNN, “facts first” is just a slogan.
Network contributor Lawrence Wilkerson this week suggested, without evidence, that “there was a little cheating” in the 2020 Kentucky Senate race when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell soundly defeated Democratic challenger Amy McGrath.
CNN host Kate Bolduan, who made a minor splash this month when she appeared on-air wearing a $380 custom-made “facts first” sweater, did exactly nothing to challenge her guest’s baseless suggestion.
Even more ironic is that Wilkerson’s conspiracy theory mongering came as he alleged, falsely, that Republicans are “never” investigated for election fraud. Did he manage to sleep through the entire Russia investigation?
It’s just a complete mess over there at CNN.
“We’ve just been through an election that was monumental,” Wilkerson said during a discussion on President Trump’s post-election shenanigans. “More Americans turned out than any other election since World War II, maybe even before that in terms of percentage. More Americans voted and voted by different methods. States upheld their laws, upheld their precedents, upheld their protocols. They did a good job.”
The CNN contributor then added, “Maybe in Kentucky there was a little cheating. I think the Kentucky race that Mitch McConnell was reelected in, against all percentages that pertained beforehand, and exit polling. And maybe there was something there, but you never look into the Republicans for cheating. And I can tell you that. I’m a Republican.”
Wilkerson is presumably referring to a bonkers, 20-plus tweet conspiracy theory alleging McConnell could not have possibly beaten McGrath by such a large margin because the Republican senator’s approval rating in the Bluegrass State is supposedly just 18%.
That’s not McConnell’s current approval rating, by the way. It’s more like 39%. That 18% figure is from 2017. It also comes from Public Policy Polling, which is notorious for engaging in left-wing wish-casting.
The stolen Kentucky election narrative to which Wilkerson is likely referring includes the usual clichés such as the use of the moniker “Moscow Mitch,” amateur interpretations of election returns, and theories about compromised voting machines. The theory also suggests that the Russians may have hacked voter rolls in Kentucky. It is exactly as deranged as one would expect of “resistance” Twitter sleuthing.
Yet, the conspiracy theory’s top lines, that McConnell may have stolen his election, were repeated this week on CNN without even the pretense of pushback from the “facts first” sweater lady.
“I think this election was incredibly well done, magnificently well done,” said Wilkerson immediately after suggesting Russians may have stolen the Kentucky Senate election. “And we should praise the states and all the people in the states who did it.”
Without blinking an eye, Bolduan responded, “We have reporting that Rudy Giuliani has called over to the Department of Homeland Security to inquire if DHS could seize voting machines. Bill Barr was asked about that also today.”
And the segment moved on, just like that, without anyone so much as flinching at the evidence-free suggestion that the Senate Majority Leader may be the beneficiary of election fraud.
Facts first, indeed.
