MAGA congressman shares bizarre conspiracy theory about Democrats and border on Fox News
A far-right member of Congress is asserting without evidence that Democrats intentionally want to harm border security for political gain.
During a recent interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee) baselessly accused his Democratic colleagues of relying on votes from undocumented immigrants to stay in power, and that people crossing the Southern border are all registering to vote for the Democratic Party in this year's election.
"For some reason, the Democrats do not care about our Southern border, and the reason they don't care about our Southern border, the truth is, all these folks are gonna come in here — they won't be able to do it in Tennessee — but dadgummit a lot of 'em are gonna be able to do mail-in ballots because there is no verification there, you do not show an ID, and that's what it's about," Burchett said. "It's about power and it's evil, corrupt, right now what I think is going on in the White House."
READ MORE: Trump touts defeating immigration deal — says America has fallen into 'cesspool of ruin'
Of course, there is no precedent for undocumented immigrants registering to vote in large numbers anywhere in the country in past elections. The Associated Press (AP) reported last month that former President Donald Trump has also embraced the conspiracy, accusing immigrants of registering to vote in various states to help Democrats pad their vote totals.
However, because registering to vote requires stating under penalty of perjury that a registrant is a US citizen, most are unwilling to take the risk of lying on an official form in which they also have to share their name and address and be tracked by state elections officials. The AP reported that because federal law requires states to regularly maintain voter rolls and remove any voter deemed ineligible to cast a ballot, there is a definitive paper trail showing how rare the practice actually is.
"In 2017, the Brennan Center examined 42 local jurisdictions around the country in the 2016 election, including some of the most populous counties in Arizona, California, Florida and Texas. Of 23.5 million votes cast, election officials found only about 30 cases of potential noncitizen voting that they referred for prosecution or further investigation," the AP's Ali Swenson wrote. "A Georgia audit of its voter rolls conducted in 2022 found fewer than 2,000 instances of noncitizens attempting to register to vote for 25 years, none of which succeeded. Millions of new Georgia voters registered during that period."
Trump took credit for killing the bipartisan legislation crafted in the US Senate that would have allocated $14 billion in new funding for border security. The ex-president has made the border a centerpiece of his 2024 campaign, and hopes to take credit for a border deal should he win election to a second term in November.
READ MORE: Mitt Romney accuses Trump of delaying border legislation 'because he wants to blame Biden'
Watch the video of Burchett's interview below or by clicking this link.
