Noting that “Republicans and their adjunct outlets have been touting one specific lie above all others lately”–that of a fictitious “$8 billion earmark in the stimulus package to build a high-speed rail connector between Las Vegas and Disneyland”–Political Animal blogger Steve Benen reports (WashingtonMonthly.com, 3/3/09) that “yesterday, Fox News gave the story a twist, changing the details of the already-bogus claim to make a brand new lie”:
Check out this exchange between Fox News‘s Megyn Kelly and Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) on the omnibus spending bill pending in the Senate:
Kelly: It’s a super railroad, of sorts–a line that will deliver customers straight from Disney, we kid you not, to the doorstep of the Moonlight Bunny Ranch brothel in Nevada. I say, to the Moonlight Bunny Ranch brothel in Nevada. So should your tax dollars be paying for these kinds of projects?
Note that the brothel in question is outside of Carson City, Nevada–more than 300 miles away from Las Vegas, where the imaginary earmark was previously delivering Disneyland visitors. Presumably this particular brothel was chosen by Fox because it includes the name of an animal, and the first rule of budget reporting is that animals are funny.
Benen particularly “love[s] the way Megyn Kelly adds ‘we kid you not’ while blatantly lying to a national television audience” and sees “an apparent attempt to win some kind of irony award” in Kelly’s request that Rep. Franks “hold lawmakers accountable for made-up earmarks that don’t exist outside Republican talking points and the GOP’s cable news channel.”