When I read the headline, Maria Bartiromo Warns President Xi is Using Migration to Create a Chinese ‘Baby Army’ in the U.S., I was in awe of the long-term planning of the Chinese tyrant. I channeled the racist trope that Asians are inscrutable long-range planners (I am not proud of myself and will try to do better, to be better). In my imagination, Xi was commanding expectant Chinese mothers to come to America and give birth to “anchor babies” who would use their constitutional citizenship to fight for China two decades from now.
Then, it occurred to me that I might have misunderstood the headline. So I read the story. It is fecking nuts.
Maria Bartiromo was once — older readers may remember this — a respected apolitical financial journalist. She won two Emmys during her 20-year stint on CNBC as the “Money Honey” on such shows as Closing Bell and On the Money with Maria Bartiromo. In 2013, Bartiromo joined Fox Business and descended into madness. With the rise of MAGA, she became a full-throated Trump fangirl and a conspiracy journalist of the first rank. And here we are.
Bartiromo was chatting about the border with Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH). Anyone who expected a substantive and dispassionate conversation based on evidence was not watching. However, her regular viewers got the batshit crazy they tuned in for.
The host began by discussing the news that Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) was now lobbying against the immigration bill he co-wrote. Lankford had been part of the bi-partisan team that negotiated an immigration measure giving Republicans most of their wish list. In February he celebrated “LANKFORD RELEASES BORDER SECURITY PACKAGE WITH HUGE WINS FOR SECURING THE BORDER” Today, he is denying paternity.
Lankford had colored outside the MAGA lines by potentially giving President Biden a win. Trump told him to get back onside. And the spineless man obliged. Lankford is allergic to his own ideas — even though the right-leaning Border Patrol Agents Union has endorsed them.
Bartiromo asked her guest to offer his thoughts on the Democrats’ attempt to reanimate the DOA legislation.
“Even one of the writers of the legislation, Senator James Lankford, said he’s a no. He’s not going to vote for this bill at this point. But I want to get your take on who specifically, whether it’s the government or the administration, who specifically is working on probing all of these military-aged men who are coming into the country?”
This is how Fox does spin. Every man, 18 and older, is or has been military age. But that is not how most men refer to those years. It made sense during the Vietnam War. But not now. However, the Fox viewer reflexively understood the point.
Bartiromo repeated the characterization so her slower viewers could keep up — and added some gravy to the red meat.
"Do you have any idea who’s actually looking at how many people who are military-aged men who are coming into the country, whether it’s Chinese nationals, or Jordanians, or anybody else?"
Jordanians? I need a scorecard. Bartiromo then introduced her hero.
“Yesterday, Bill Melugin ran into one citizen who’s who started collecting all of the passports that the illegals are dropping on the floor. They don’t want to have I.D. on them when they get apprehended. So they drop their passports on the floor in California and Texas. And this one resident is picking them all up. And he’s got a pretty clear idea of who’s coming into the country. Watch this.”
Bill Melugin is Fox’s illegal immigration reporter. Bartiromo does not identify the ‘one citizen’ collecting the passports. But this is him standing in front of a display of documents in baggies.
The citizen had this to say:
“They’re just dropping this stuff on the ground to come here and assume a new identity. So that’s a little bit scary for me with my military background and seeing the people that are coming across: male, male, male. These are all military males. People keep saying that I’ve got the proof right here.”
What is in those baggies? If they are “destroyed passports”, it is odd that they left the ID page unharmed. Besides, if I were trying to conceal my identity, I would not “drop it on the floor” for any Tom, Dick, or MAGA to find it.
Whatever he does have, those are not Chinese or Jordanian passports. This is what those passports look like (exterior and identity pages)
Note: They both have a second picture of the passport holder on the right. We do not know what the unidentified citizen has because neither Fox nor Bartiromo do details. And verification is for losers. Maria forges on:
“So there you go. The passports are right there. They’re largely military-aged men. Many from communist China. A lot of people are worried that Xi Jinping is creating a little baby army here in America. Who’s watching that?”
The “a lot of people” who are worried about Xi’s “little baby army” are Fox viewers. And they are worried because Fox tells them to be. If the cable channel were honest (stop laughing, it's a hypothetical), it would revive its erstwhile slogan and tweak it to “Fear and Unbalanced.”
Bartiromo finally gave her guest a chance to speak. Given the floor, Davidson offered nothing original. (Watching Fox must be a great comfort to people who like to be scared but fear new things.) Davidson blathered about Ukraine, the pointless Mayorkas impeachment, an unfocussed DHS, and how the Biden administration sucks.
Bartiromo ignored his answer. Davidson had missed his cue. He did not talk about Chinese baby armies and military-aged men, so Maria was not interested in what he had to say. Instead, she re-plowed some dead ground.
“Well, I mean, you’re on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. What is your role on the House Foreign Affairs Committee? I mean, what are we going to do at some point, turn around and say, oh, wow, we’ve got a million people, military-age men, and now they’re up in arms and they are creating discontent in America. Are we just going to say, oh, wow, look at all these Chinese military-aged men that are in the country? They’re like a little baby army. Wow, we missed that. I mean, what are we doing about this?”
Davidson did not know the correct answer to Bartiromo’s fever dream question. So he went to his safe space and blamed the House Speaker.
“Yeah, I mean, that’s why it’s so consequential. When Speaker Johnson chose to cut a quote, four corners deal with him, Hakeem, Jeffries, Schumer, and McConnell instead of working with our body. I mean, a majority of Republicans didn’t vote for the funding bill. And the main reason we didn’t vote for it is because we were promised that, yes, we will fund our government, but we’re only going to fund a government that will secure the border.”
And that was that.