On Sunday night, the Senate made the first steps toward ending the Schumer Shutdown, and the Keith Olbermanns of the world were fulminating away. Suddenly, the networks admitted it was the Democrats who had been holding out and shutting down things. NewsBusters Managing Editor Curtis Houck and Senior Research Analyst Bill D’Agostino joined the show for the breakdown.
Bill found in October, the big three broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) hammered both Congressional Republicans and President Trump with a wall of negative shutdown coverage, while largely shielding Democrats from blame for the now-historic gridlock. Across the 67 reports and news briefs which discussed the government shutdown on the evening news shows in October, 87 percent of the coverage favored Democrats.
Curtis conducted an analysis of five leading liberal Capitol Hill reporters on X and found by a margin of roughly two-and-a-half-to-one (72 to 28), they tweeted more times since the start of the government shutdown to condemn Speaker Mike Johnson and the House for being out of session than they highlighted crucial government programs like food stamps and pay for soldiers that have been affected by the Democrat-created crisis.
The Sunday shows had some highlights. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was being pushed around on the Schumer Shutdown by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, the former Clinton press secretary. Bessent said Team Clinton called the Republicans “terrorists” in the budget battles: “I went back and read your book. So, you got one purchase on Amazon this week. And that’s very much what you said.”
Stephanopoulos claimed it was a “mischaracterization of history.” No. It wasn’t. In an interview with PBS in 2000, George explained “Our strategy was very simple. We couldn’t buckle, and we had to say that they were blackmailing the country to get their way….And we were trying to say that they were basically terrorists, and it worked.”
In January of 1995, NBC’s Bryant Gumbel noted to Rep. Dick Gephardt that he’d described “Gingrich and his ilk” as “trickle-down terrorists who base their agenda on division, exclusion, and fear.” He asked if middle-class Americans “need protection” from them.
We also discuss the scandal at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) over fraudulent editing of Donald Trump’s speech to supporters on January 6, 2021 — not to mention the BBC’s horribly pro-Hamas coverage of the war in Gaza.
Enjoy the podcast below, or listen to the audio here.
