On Wednesday evening, author and political commentator Molly Hemingway shut down popular Democratic Party narratives surrounding the years-long Russian collusion hoax and socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) talking point about billionaires buying elections.
Appearing on Fox News’ “Special Report,” Hemingway commented on billionaire and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg dropping out of the presidential race on Wednesday, despite spending a stunning $550-plus million on his campaign (which averaged out to an estimated $12.2 million per delegate).
“I also think it is interesting that Bloomberg is out,” Hemingway told “Special Report” host Bret Baier. “We had years where people were saying a couple hundred thousand dollars and barely literate Facebook ads from Russians caused Donald Trump to win. Here you had a guy spend nearly $1 billion and he went nowhere. It’s a humiliating defeat for Michael Bloomberg.”
“That is a great point,” the Fox host chimed in. “So, Russians influenced the election with $200,000, $300,000 in Facebook ads.”
Hemingway interjected, “If that.”
“And Mike Bloomberg couldn’t get more than 50 delegates with $600 million,” added Baier.
Bloomberg’s defeat also hits Sanders’ economic message, Hemingway noted, pinpointing the “establishment” and the mainstream media as the real power in national politics.
“And that hurts Bernie Sanders’ message, too,” the commentator outlined. “He likes to say the billionaires control everything. Well, here, clearly, Bloomberg having all this money didn’t do as much for him, as Biden having the media and establishment behind him.”
As reported by The Daily Wire on Wednesday, Bloomberg “dropped at least $550 million of his massive fortune into his pursuit of the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination” and won just 45 delegates, averaging out to more than $12.2 million per delegate.
The former mayor shelled out $54 million in advertising in California alone, the reported noted, where Bloomberg won just eight delegates, averaging out to $6.75 million per delegate.
As reported by The Daily Wire last year, the echoed claims that Russian “trolls” on social media helped Trump win the 2016 have been widely debunked.
“The claim has been already debunked – by FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver – but now The Washington Post’s Philip Bump is calling out the claim,” The Daily Wire’s Ashe Schow outlined in July. “For reference, the Post has also pushed the narrative that Russian social media trolls influenced the election to such a degree that Trump illegitimately won.”
“[T]here’s very little evidence that Russia effectively targeted American voters with messages that powered Trump’s victory,” Bump wrote at the Post. “Russia paid for a lot of Facebook ads in the populous states of New York and Texas in the last five weeks of the campaign, but its ads targeting the three states that handed Trump the election — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — were seen by only 1,000 people. There’s no evidence at all that Russia used Twitter to target people in particular places or demographic groups, targeting that would have left fingerprints in the form of receipts for payment.”
Moreover, Bumped dismantled a study pushed by the likes of NBC News that claimed “Russian propaganda may really have helped Trump.”
“As Bump noted, the study is yet another example of correlation versus causation. For example, the study found that Trump’s support jumped to 44% ‘when IRA tweets were at their most successful,’ but Bump pointed out that Trump’s support was similarly high in late 2015 when the IRA tweets were not successful,” Schow outlined.
WATCH:
.@MZHemingway: "I think it is interesting that Bloomberg is out. We had years where people were saying a couple hundred thousand dollars and barely literate Facebook ads from Russians caused Donald Trump to win. Here you had a guy spend nearly $1 billion and he went nowhere." pic.twitter.com/jW6Q8Bo5Wp
— The Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) March 4, 2020