Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Thursday on CNN’s “The Lead” that Fox News was the “number one cause” of “erosion in our democracy” while discussing the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against FNC for defamation.
Schumer said, “The threat to our democracy may be greater than it ever has been before because when people doubt that the elections are for real, democracy is on edge. After all, the wellspring, the heart of our democracy, is that we trust the elections. You know, I worry that if this erodes, our democracy will erode, and my children and grandchildren will not grow up in the grand democracy that gave me, the son of an exterminator, the opportunities that I have had. What caused this? Number one was Fox News and their commentators spreading the big lie day after day, night after night, hour after hour, week after week, year after year. They’re the number one cause that there is such erosion in our democracy.”
He added, “It’s something that I feel. I love this democracy. We line up every November for 200 years and change. We go vote. And the next day, everyone abided by the election, whether we won or lost, even remember Bush v. Gore. And now, all of a sudden, you have this network spreading the lies, doing it very effectively and making a third of the people, two-thirds of the Republican Party, believe this democracy ain’t on the level. You know, when you study dictatorship, this is the beginning of the end. I don’t think it’ll be that here because the American roots of democracy are strong. But I worry about it, and there’s a demand to push back.”
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