It’s the most wonderful time of the year! When ding-dongs (ding-dong!) over in the right-wing-o-sphere tell you how the war on Christmas is going. Spoiler alert: It has been going terribly for white baby Jesus-loving conservative Christians for decades now! I remember the last time we were all able to celebrate Christmas: last year. That was thankfully after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump, but sadly not before The Donald botched the pandemic and we all were sequestered away from loved ones.

Anyways, as you can see from the image above, there is a Santa shortage! Fox News’ Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino attempted to do what passes as holiday cheer over at the third through ninth rings of Dante’s Inferno by attempting to turn the tragic public health and economic crisis into an attack on the Biden administration. However, the facts of the matter are so hard to manipulate that the Fox News anchors produced what is arguably the strangest moment of battle from the front lines of the War on Christmas.

Hemmer began by throwing out a statistic from hiresanta.com that claims the demand for Santas is up 121% while the availability of Santas is down 10% from last year. Before we dig down Fox News deep into these explosive numbers, let’s remember that Bill Hemmer had to take time away from worrying that Bible characters were on the brink of being “canceled” to file this segment. Of course, the rise in retail outlets and commercial areas looking to hire Santa Clauses for the holiday season makes sense. More places are open and out of lockdown than there were this time last year. More people have been vaccinated and feel like they can go out into the world to do things.

But why are there less available Santas? Is it because Santa Claus is a welfare moocher, living high on the hog after liberal commies pushed for increased unemployment benefits? Well, it isn’t. Even Hemmer, revving up his ignoramus engine, realizes this as he and Perino bring on HireSanta.com’s “Head Elf” Mitch Allen to talk about what is going on. Maybe because he’s been so thoroughly trained to misinform, Hemmer does Allen’s lead-in like this: “I saw the story and I said ‘Man, even Santa doesn’t want to work in this economy—uh, that’s not really the case. Tell me what you’re up against?”

After reiterating the demand, Allen cuts to the chase: “We’ve lost a number of Santas over the last year and a half as well.” Sad horn sound. So, it isn’t “this economy” at all, amiright, Bill? It’s all the dead Santas, killed by the not-a-big deal COVID-19 virus. Maybe some of those deaths were the result of Hemmer and his pretend news organization’s misinformation campaign to downplay the severity of the 2019 novel coronavirus? Who’s to say?

Allen told KTLA: “Unfortunately, we’ve lost a number of terrific Santa Claus entertainers over the last few months, primarily due to COVID. As you can imagine, our Santas are in a high-risk group for a negative outcome if they get COVID. So, we had a number of Santas that passed away over the last 18 months.”

Responses to this segment were appropriately sardonic.

Fact checker.

Investigative reporter.

Potential film executive.

It’s too late. The Biden family’s war on Christmas has begun.

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