Sometimes it seems like there’s never a story Fox News can’t twist around and make false. This time the cable network’s so-called “straight news” division purported Wednesday that President Joe Biden was reversing course [1] on his actions to stop construction of former President Donald Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall.
Indeed, Fox News ran the headline “Biden resumes wall construction after promising to halt it.”
But, as noted by Media Matters for America’s [2] Eric Kleefeld, [3] Fox News is really little more than a megaphone for the right-wing.
“What this story really provides, however, is another object lesson [4] in how Fox’s alleged ‘news side’ [5] has only existed for years [6] as a feeder trough for more right-wing opinion programming,” [7] Kleefeld writes.
I know I’ve just bombarded you with a bunch of links, but few sites are as well-equipped to handle Fox News’s b.s. as MMFA is. Kleefeld notes the Biden border story above is completely untrue. What the Biden administration is actually doing is resolving problems that were created by Trump’s wall.
“The actual problem being addressed was that in the course of building Trump’s border wall, engineers had to dig out existing water-control systems — which are now left exposed,” Kleefeld notes. “Local officials have sounded the alarm on this complication, and so the federal government has set to restoring those levees before the seasonal floods begin again.”
Plus, this story isn’t really even new. [8] The Department of Homeland Security agreed last month to help with repairs after Texas officials started [9] their own plan to begin work regardless of bureaucratic snafus on the federal side of things.
“As such,” Kleefeld notes, “while the work itself must still be completed, the resolution of this story [10] is effectively old news.”
Fox News has since amended [11] the online article’s headline to read that Biden has resumed “border wall levee construction, including “priority repairs” in the Rio Grande Valley.
Part of the conservative news network’s misinformation campaign continued in earnest during the Wednesday night edition of Special Report with Bret Baier, when Bill Melugin, Fox News’s national correspondent reported “breaking news” (subsequently confirmed by Fox News) that “the U.S. Army Corps. of Engineers is actually going to be restarting border wall construction down the Rio Grande Valley,” after “a lot of blowback and pressure from local residents and local politicians.”
“That,” Baier commented, “is big news for the Biden administration.”
Too bad this “news” is not true.
Melugin even had to delete [12] a tweet that claimed that border wall construction had begun anew after the Army Corps. of Engineers clarified it was simply rebuilding the levees. And that no, work on the wall wasn’t resuming.
In support of CBP’s border infrastructure program, USACE has resumed DHS-funded design & construction support on approx. 13.4 miles of levee in the Rio Grande Valley that were partially excavated or at various levels of construction when work on the wall was paused for review.
— USACE HQ (@USACEHQ) May 12, 2021 [13]
Melugin has, ahem, amended even further with this tweet:
UPDATE: @FoxNews [14] has confirmed via the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that construction on a 13.4 mile stretch of border wall levee in the Rio Grande Valley will *RESUME* after pressure from local residents & politicians.
The Biden admin previously halted all construction.— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) May 13, 2021 [15]
But Melugin’s original tweet now lives in infamy because Fox News host Sean Hannity ran with it again in his typical spin later on Wednesday night. Even to the point of including a screengrab of Melugin’s original screw up. Because why goof once when you can do it twice?
I really recommend you read Kleefeld’s article because he concisely dots all the i’s and crosses all the t’s where Fox News went with this. Anyone who watches this propagandist network should take the information with a boulder of salt.