“The View” host Meghan McCain appeared to side with President Donald Trump on Tuesday by suggesting that election fraud is happening in Florida with a distorted attack on Broward County election supervisor Brenda Snipes that was swiftly shot down by Sunny Hostin.
Trump has been crying election fraud for days since the recount began in both the Senate and gubernatorial races this weekend.
The focus of Republicans’ ire is Broward County, which usually votes heavily for Democrats and is where many absentee ballots have been discovered or are still coming in.
Of course, Republicans believe that Broward County supervisor Snipes is concocting a scheme to steal the election, and McCain apparently took the bait hook, line and sinker.
“Every vote should, 100 percent, take the time to be counted, obviously,” she began. “But, Brenda Snipes is the woman in charge, the supervisor in Broward County, which is where a lot of this has been going on.”
In a desperate effort to make her case, McCain brought up past election violations by Snipes.
“She illegally destroyed physical ballots for a 2016 race, 21 months after a medical marijuana amendment was just completely left off the ballot in 2016. This specific county has had a lot of controversy in its background, and seems to be always sort of the stem of a lot of problems.”
It should be noted that the ballots were destroyed after a Democratic congressional primary race that had already been decided.
Joy Behar pointed out that Snipes was appointed to her position by former GOP Governor Jeb Bush, and has been re-elected to the position multiple times since 2003.
But former federal prosecutor Sunny Hostin chimed in by fact-checking McCain.
“I think on the Republican side, you’re hearing so much about this woman, Brenda Snipes, and the bottom line is, she did destroy the ballots, but it was 12 months after the election,” Hostin said. “It’s not like it changed the election. [T]he suggestion that Broward County, which does largely skew Democratic, is the problem, I think is a little bit dishonest.”
Here’s the video via YouTube.
Indeed, incredibly dishonest. Snipes has never been accused of trying to steal an election for Democrats, nor has she been accused of trying to steal an election for Republicans. She is merely doing her job by obeying state law, which mandates an automatic recount when the vote margin in any race reaches a certain threshold. That happened in the Senate and gubernatorial races. The recount is also being watched very closely by election lawyers on both sides. There’s no way Snipes could get away with such a scheme even if she wanted to do it.
McCain is out of line by suggesting there is election fraud in the Florida recount. It plays right into Trump’s hands and incites outrage and threats from conservatives against election officials who are just trying to do their job, which is to make sure democracy works by counting every single vote.
Featured Image: YouTube screenshot
