Fox News Is Kinda Sorta Sorry for Starting the Rumor That Biden Is Banning Beef

The Biden administration isn’t enforcing a cap on the amount of red meat Americans can consume, much to the chagrin of right-wingers who spent the weekend in a frenzy over such rumors.

On Monday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that, “There is no effort designed to limit people’s intake of beef coming out of President Biden’s White House or USDA.” He added that “in the political world, games get played and issues are injected into the conversation knowing full well that there’s no factual basis.”

Tell that to Fox News, just one of the conservative outlets that helped spread the ludicrous claim to begin with.

On Friday, Fox News began airing several news segments claiming that Biden’s ambitious climate plan insists upon cutting 90 percent of red meat from one’s diet, consuming a maximum of four pounds of red meat per year, and limiting Americans to one burger per month.

However, this data isn’t taken from anything divorced from the Biden administration—it originates from an April 2020 University of Michigan and Tulane University joint study that found that drastically reducing red meat consumption could lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. A press brief about the study reads, “If beef consumption were reduced by 90% alongside the 50% reduction in other animal products, it would prevent more than 2 billion tons of greenhouse gas pollution. That’s roughly equivalent to taking nearly half the world’s cars off the roads for a year.”

While Biden recently set forth a goal to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent by 2030, Politico reports that he “did not detail any specific targets for the farm industry, which accounts for about 10 percent of emissions.” And Biden certainly didn’t indicate that the findings from the Michigan-Tulane study would act as a roadmap to his climate policy.

But that didn’t stop Fox News from pushing the falsehood ad naseum over the last 72 hours, leading everyone from Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, and right-wing meme king Donald Trump Jr to show their asses; an easy feat, but embarrassing all the same.

But now, Fox News is gently walking back their little error. On Monday, Fox News’s John Roberts admitted that “a graphic and a script incorrectly implied that it was part of Biden’s plan for dealing with climate change.”

But given the dearth of right-wingers who cooked a bunch of beef to own the libs, and the monstrosities that resulted… maybe Biden should enforce some red meat limitations. What the fuck is this?