If it's Saturday it's a day for white folks to get on white folk television so they can fearmonger about black and brown folks voting and how citizens should be the only people allowed to vote because reasons.
And so they sent Kayleigh McEnany out to Fox News, where she proceeded to make a fool of herself in front of Koch shill Pete Hegseth and Johns Hopkins professor Wendy Osefo.
The segment went off the rails when McEnany, the national spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, claimed “for a party that says they care so much about foreign influence in our election, they don’t seem to care about illegal immigrants, non-citizens, voting.”
Oh yeah, and off the rails it definitely did go, in weird and bizarre directions.
First, we have McEnany suggesting Democrats would like Vladimir Putin to send over a whole bunch of Russians to vote for Trump or something. Here, you figure it out.
“What would you do, Wendy, if Vladimir Putin decides to send over a few hundred thousands to vote in our federal elections?” McEnany asked. “According to the left, that’s exactly what you want.”
Um WUT? We're having apoplexy about Trump being Putin's puppet, but why would we possibly be excited about an influx of Putin-ordered Russians, again?
Professor Wendy Osefo was blunt: “You can’t tell me what I want, Kayleigh, because you don’t know anything.”
“You should know your history,” Osefo instructed McEnany. “Until 1926, immigrants and non-citizens were able to vote in not only local elections, but also federal elections.”
Perish the thought. Do not say things like that to the RNC-I-Am-Oh-So-White-and-Supreme Spokeswoman. You will trigger her, and trigger her, Dr. Osefo did, prompting Whiter-Than-White-White-Knight-Hegseth to step in.
“There is one word I didn’t hear you say one time and that is ‘citizens,’ Hegseth groused. Citizenship used to matter in this country and apparently it doesn’t anymore, Kayleigh.”
It was almost like he diidn't hear what that African-American professor was telling him. So let's review that one more time. Here is a handy PBS explainer about voting rights and immigrants:
What the law says: The Constitution does not prohibit anyone from voting. Instead, it spells out who cannot be denied the right to vote. The 14th Amendment says men who are U.S. citizens and over the age of 21 must be allowed to vote, unless they have committed a crime. The 15th Amendment prohibits anyone from denying the right to vote based on skin color and the 19th Amendment prohibits denying the right to vote based on sex (aka being a woman).
It wasn’t until 1926 that all states passed laws barring noncitizens from voting. Congress passed a law 70 years later prohibiting illegal immigrants from voting “for the office of President, Vice President, Presidential elector, Member of the Senate, Member of the House of Representatives, Delegate from the District of Columbia, or Resident Commissioner.”
San Francisco allowing immigrants to register and vote for the school board is not an unpardonable sin. It makes sense, actually, if for no other reason than to give parents of children in school a say in how their schools are run.
But if you are a white supremacist who also happens to serve the RNC, and if you are bored on a Saturday, sure, why not stir up some ridiculous claims about Russians to muddy the waters?
