Tucker Carlson has walked back his assertions that a late Georgia resident named James Blalock voted in the 2020 election after the Georgian’s widow provided an explanation. On Friday’s episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the eponymous host, apologized for spreading misinformation on James Blalock’s voting.
“One of the people who voted in last week’s election isn’t dead. James Blalock is still dead, we told you about him. But it was his wife who voted,” Carlson explained. “She voted as Mrs. James Blalock. It’s old-fashioned and we missed it.”
“A whole bunch of dead people did vote, we showed you their names, we proved it – but James Blalock was not among them,” the Fox News host continued. “It was Mrs. James Blalock. So apologies for that. Of course, we’re always going to correct when we’re wrong. And we were.”
The on-air apology comes as the Trump campaign continues to push the idea of voter fraud in states including Georgia, where Biden claimed victory over Trump. Earlier this week, the official Trump campaign Twitter account wrote that Blalock, who died in 2006, “was a victim of voter fruad,” a claim that Carlson had amplified on his show on Thursday.
Carlson and the Trump campaign were proven incorrect when Newton County officials issued a press release that revealed Blalock’s widow voted in his name.
“The Secretary of State’s database does not pick up the pre-fix of Mrs., and a check in her profile shows she is a female. Her signature on the records reflects that her voter registration was signed as Mrs. James E. Blalock, Jr. and that is exactly how she signed her name when she voted in the Nov. 3 General Election,” the official Newton County statement reads.
Along with the Trump campaign, GOP figures including Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell have echoed the president’s claims of voter fraud in this year’s presidential election, despite little evidence to back their assertions. On Saturday it was announced that Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani would head the legal challenges of the 2020 election.