[Above: Emerald Robinson in happier days, starring in "Hit Team," 2015. -- eds]
Emerald Robinson is to ultra-conservative propaganda machine Newsmax what Steve Doocy is to ultra-conservative propaganda machine Fox News. She is one of two (occasionally three) people in the White House press briefings who ask truly oblique questions and then are served with reality papers by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. In recent months, Robinson has made headlines by acting like a gossipy high school teen from a badly written after-school special, openly creating “facts” on the fly in the hopes of making conservative fanboys squeal.
On Thursday, multiple outlets reported that Robinson has been pulled off the air after making a bizarre enough claim about COVID-19 vaccines that even Newsmax had to do some damage control. According to the Daily News, Robinson went to her already over-the-line-bizarre Twitter account and posted: “Dear Christians: the vaccines contain a bioluminescent marker called LUCIFERASE so that you can be tracked.” Robinson’s brand includes being conservative Christian, so making connections between the devil and Luciferase (Lucifer anyone?) was a short walk through her tiny mind, I guess.
However, just because words sound similar to other words does not make you right. Then again, Ronald Wilson Reagan has six letters in each one of his full names. 666! Just sayin’!
The Daily Beast reports that an employee at Newsmax told them their newsroom (which I imagine just consists of people doing shots of Jagermeister and watching old clips of Donald Trump firing people on The Apprentice) said that people were very happy that Robinson had been put on the sidelines. “It’s really buzzing the newsroom. I think it’s a good idea. If we are going to be viewed as a news organization, we have to act like one.” I hate to be the one to tell this staffer that ship sailed long ago.
This news comes just one day after it was reported that Smartmatic, a voting technology company, was suing both Newsmax and One America News for defamation in their inaccurate reporting on claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election. That was a few months of time when Newsmax could have made the argument that they were a “news organization,” but instead decided to repeatedly and willfully lie about the nature of the elections.
Newsmax released a statement about Robinson’s trip to quiet town in order to stay under the radar long enough for things to pass. “Newsmax strongly believes and has reported that the Covid 19 vaccines are safe and effective. We do not believe the vaccines contain any toxic materials or tracking markers, and such false claims have never been reported on Newsmax. The many medical experts appearing on Newsmax have supported the use of the vaccine.” Sounds like someone just got word that people dying of COVID-19 and their families might consider class action cases against outlets that misinform them about important public health information.
But before we all pretend that Newsmax is doing the right thing here for any other reason than someone in their legal department pressed a red button, let’s just remember that Robinson was given a short break starting Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021.
That’s from a little over two weeks ago. This is the tweet pinned to Robinson’s account as of the writing of this story.
And this is her on Halloween.
Robinson worked at OAN before she brought her brand of conservative Christian misinformation to Newsmax.
Republished with permission from Daily Kos.
