Abby Huntsman promised to “address” her baseless story about food stamp fraud on Fox & Friends today. So how did she do? Mediaite tells us:
Huntsman admitted the error the following day, reading a correction twice on-air: “We reported that back in 2016, $70 million were wasted on food stamp fraud. That was actually incorrect.”
“The latest information from 2009 to 2011 shows the fraud at 1.3%, which is approximately $853 million for each of those three years, and nationally food-stamp trafficking is on the decline. So sorry about that mistake,” she said.
“Food stamp trafficking is on the decline.” I wonder how much of her audience understands that this means “food stamp fraud is on the decline”? Oh well. At least she mentioned it.
I have to say, though, that what I’m really curious about is where the original $70 million figure came from. Made up out of thin air? Somebody read the wrong column in a report? Or what? I literally can’t think of what sort of data you could dig up that would lead to this number, even in error. I suppose we’ll never know.
