Fox News is getting mercilessly mocked on Twitter after attempting to smear Democrats by reporting a supposed ranking of the unhealthiest cities in the U.S. in the exact opposite order.
The report was purportedly about the "Top Ten Most Unhealthy U.S. Cities," all of which are led by Democrats.
The problem is the data is readily available, and as Twitter commentator @Acyn quickly discovered via a simple Google search, the cities Fox News reported as the ten unhealthiest are actually the healthiest in the nation.
See @Acyn's tweet below.
Lest you think @Acyn did a bunch of high-level sleuthing here, think again: As they said in their tweet, they simply went to Fox's very own source cited oncreen.
As seen below in the screenshot @Acyn included, the cities cited on Fox's map are actually the top 10 healthiest in the U.S.
@Acyn/Twitter
The totally incorrect graphics appeared on far-right ideologue Dan Bongino's show Unfiltered as evidence of the Democrats' supposed lack of interest in the health of people in urban areas.
To illustrate this nonsense, Bongino used a map marked with supposedly "unhealthy" cities like San Francisco, Seattle, and Denver, where Bongino claimed "you stand a pretty good chance of dyin'" because they are run by "Democrats... who [don't give] a damn about people and their health outcomes."
Fact check, please!
Of course, those cities are far better known as meccas for sporty, outdoorsy types than people who are just withering away. And Fox's cited source revealed the actual top 10 most unhealthy cities are all in Texas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and West Virginia--among the reddest states in the union. Oops.
And just to add a cherry on top, Bongino and his team appear to have mixed up 143rd-healthiest Irving, Texas, which was marked on their map graphic, with 8th-healthiest Irvine, California. Oops, again.
So was this just a careless mistake or a deliberate bald-faced lie? Given that Bongino is so dedicated to misinformation that he's just been permanently banned from YouTube for spreading lies about COVID-19, it seems likely it's the latter.
Either way, the drags came in hot on Twitter.
Regardless of his intent, Bongino definitely noticed the blowback and the map was subsequently removed from the replay later that night.
Fox News also toldThe Daily Beast that a correction would be issued on next week's episode of Unfiltered.
Too little too late.