Fox News reporter laughs at Trump for saying you need ID to buy groceries

Trump held another lie-filled rally in Tampa, Florida, on Tuesday night, but one of the lies he told stood out so much that even Fox News White House correspondent John Roberts felt compelled say something.

At one point during Tuesday night’s rally, Trump told the crowd “the time has come for voter ID.”

“If you go out and you want to buy groceries, you need a picture on a card,” Trump added. “You need ID. You go out and you want to buy anything, you need ID. And you need your picture.”

On Wednesday’s edition of “America’s Newsroom,” Roberts introduced that clip for anchor Bill Hemmer, noting that it had “a lot of people scratching their heads.”

“Just a personal observation here, ” Roberts said with a laugh. “When I’ve been to the grocery store and bought beer or wine, they ask me for my ID. But certainly not when I buy eggs, milk, butter or anything else.”

Trump’s assertion about groceries may have been silly, but so-called voter ID laws are no laughing matter. They are a key pillar of ongoing Republican voter suppression efforts, along with gerrymandering, voter registration purges, and others.

Trump has been pushing voter suppression since his presidential campaign, but turned that push into policy when he created a commission that was dedicated to proving his false claim that millions of undocumented immigrants voted in the 2016 presidential election.

That commission was an utter failure, and Trump was forced to shut it down in January. But voter suppression has been a long-term project for Republicans, as illustrated by Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ long record of attacking voting rights. Sessions has criticized the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and as U..S attorney in Alabama he led a failed prosecution of election rights activists.

The fact is that in-person voter fraud is practically non-existent. But because measures like voter ID laws disproportionately affect minorities who aren’t likely to vote for them, Republicans push the myth in order to suppress minority votes.

The last thing Trump and the Republicans want to do is face the voters they have systematically tried to disenfranchise, but eventually, those voters will have the last laugh.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.