Trump Regime Media At The MRC: Shutdown Talking Points, Part 2

The Media Research Center continued to whine that non-right-wing media wasn't sufficiently blaming Democrats for the government shutdown or parroting a narrative about health care.

Tim Graham kicked off the third day of the government shutdown — piling on previous Media Research Center whining about it — with an Oct. 3 column whining that Democrats aren’t being sufficiently blamed for it:

If the national media can be counted on to spin anything dramatically toward the Democrats, it’s a government shutdown. They feel passionately that the Democrats are the Party of Government, and the Republicans are the Haters of Government, so who naturally favors shutting it all down?

Even before the shutdown occurred, NPR and PBS issued their poll warning Republicans would get more of the blame than Democrats. That’s why those partisan hacks deserved defunding. A substantial minority would blame both parties, because the independents told NPR “They’re just fighting like two little kids.”

But pinning blame on Republicans is the perennial goal of press coverage.

And blaming Democrats is not the perennial goal of the MRC, Fox News and other Trump Regime Media? Graham didn’t talk about that, nor did he explain why Republicans should not be blamed.

Comedy cop Alex Christy grumbled that the main right-wing talking point on the shutdown was called out:

The synergy between the liberal late night comedy shows and the liberal news media was on full display on Thursday night as The Late Show’s Stephen Colbert and The Daily Show’s Ronny Chieng each relied on their journalist compatriots on CBS and The Daily Show, respectively, to claim Republicans are, in Colbert’s words, being “stupid” and “fearmongering” by saying Democrats want to give federal benefits to illegal aliens in exchange for ending the government shutdown.

Colbert introduced a montage of Republicans making that point by declaring, “The sticking point of the shutdown negotiations has been healthcare. The Democrats want to restore some of the Affordable Care Act benefits that the Republicans cut earlier this year in the Big Beautiful Bill, or as the Republicans describe it.”

Vice President JD Vance concluded the clip package by stating, “The Democrats, their whole argument is we are going to shut down the government unless you give a trillion dollars for medical benefits for illegal aliens.”

Colbert then introduced another montage, “No, it’s not their argument, Beardo. It’s not—no one is proposing that. That’s not true, right, TV peoples?”

Rather than offer a coherent defense, Christy focused on word-parsing, declaring that “the Biden administration waved a magic wand and gave millions of illegal immigrants legal status by designating them as parolees” and huffing: “It is one thing for Democrats to argue parolees should not be counted as illegal immigrants. It is quite another for media people, including comedians, to stand on their soapboxes and claim that Republican arguments to the contrary are so wildly false that they must interrupt Republican press conferences to prevent them from being heard. That’s not what fact-checking is supposed to be.

As Wonkette explains, this particular fight is actually about a small amount of Medicaid money — not a trillion dollars — used to reimburse hospitals for providing emergency care to undocumented immigrants. Christy and his fellow Trump Regime Media denizens don’t explain why it’s a bad thing to provide emergency care to someone because they’re not a citizen.

Trump Regime Media At The MRC: Shutdown Talking Points

Craig Bannister served up the usual propaganda that CNSNews.com now represents:

“This madness must end,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a press event Friday, calling on Democrats to end their government shutdown’s “intentional sabotage of our country.”

Leavitt was citing a statement released earlier in the day by Business Roundtable CEO Joshua Bolten urging Democrats to reopen the government by voting for a continuing resolution to fund the government that’s identical to the previous one, which Democrats voted to pass:

[…]

“All we need are five Democrat senators to do the right thing and to stop this shutdown,” the press secretary said, alluding the number of additional Democrat votes needed to break their party’s filibuster of the continuing resolution.

Bannister couldn’t be bothered to obtain the view of the other side — his job is parroting propaganda, not reporting news. Meanwhile, Curtis Houck clung to the Trump Regime Media narrative on healthcare for immigrants:

Falling in between ABC’s George Stephanopoulos’s partisan hectoring on Wednesday and Thursday’s respectful exchanges with CBS’s Tony Dokoupil, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) finished a tour of the broadcast networks Friday on NBC’s Today.

There, co-host Craig Melvin battled him over the government shutdown by using week-old polls claiming Americans believe Republicans are to blame, but insisted “we can’t get to” the GOP’s “misleading” claim illegal immigrants receive free health.

Houck himself was misleading by omitting the fact that the fight is about reimbursing hospitals for emergency care. Houck did finally acknowledge that point, thought, in repeating more propaganda later in the day:

In a rare second White House press briefing of the week, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt largely avoided the disingenuous nonsense the liberal media have spewed this week about the federal government shutdown and declarations that Republicans are to blame and falsely claiming Democrats support free health care for illegal immigrants. But towards the end of the briefing, she ran into such partisan hijinks from CBS and the U.K.’s Independent.

CBS News Radio’s Linda Kenyon first raised this issue in the briefing’s waning moments, huffing there’s “a disconnect in the [GOP’s] messaging” with regard to the facts because “U.S. already prohibits” “giving health care to illegal immigrants.”

Leavitt was not having an ounce of this partisan spin and offered an extensive explanation about how Medicaid picks up the emergency room tabs for those unable to pay…which would include illegal immigrants and wreaked havoc on major cities[.] […]

A few minutes later, The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg had the briefing’s final question and wondered what the administration believes hospitals should do with illegal immigrants who arrive at their doorstep (i.e. turn them away, leaving them to fate):

But Houck didn’t bother to embed the transcript of Leavitt’s responses, only video clips taken from his X account — and he was certainly not going to acknowledge that she’s the one who’s peddling partisan spin. This tells us that either Leavitt’s responses weren’t very convincing or that Houck has gotten quite lazy.

Day 4 and beyond

The MRC’s Trump Regime Media routine on the government shutdown continued with an Oct. 4 post by Alex Christy cheering that a conservative stuck to the approved narrative:

A Friday episode of PBS News Hour where New York Times columnist David Brooks manages to actually say something that fully triggers MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart is a rare occurrence, but this Friday Capehart could not tolerate the idea that Democrats are the ones corroding democracy with their government shutdown.

Capehart simply wasn’t having a fun time on Friday. When asked by host Geoff Bennett why Democrats aren’t being hypocritical, given their rhetoric around previous shutdowns, Capehart basically said it was different because Democrats are good and Republicans are bad.

Bennett then turned to Brooks and asked the opposite question, “And one of those reasons Democrats say is about extending Obamacare subsidies, with premiums set to skyrocket. Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, he shared this example on social media. A Georgian earning $65,000 a year would see premiums jump from about $300 a month to over $950 a month. And, David, shouldn’t the party that controls the House, the Senate and the White House do more to end a shutdown than just dig in?”

At first, Brooks simply stated, “No.”

He then elaborated, “I hate the fact that we’re here. So here’s what happened. In 2020, the Democrats win an election and they have power. And so, in 2021, they passed a bill which further increased the health insurance subsidies as part of Obamacare. And when they did it, they passed it to sunset in 2025. In 2024, the Republicans win an election. And guess what? They passed legislation that go with their policy priorities and they let the subsidies sunset.”

Christy groused some more:

ABC senior White House correspondent Selina Wang brought out the emotional heartstrings on Saturday’s Good Morning America to warn that people “could suffer” if Democrats cave on the government shutdown.

Wang teed up a clip of Senate Majority Leader John Thune by declaring Republicans are “refusing to negotiate until Democrats reopen the government.”

[…]

While Thune was portrayed as a man demanding Democrats vote for a Republican bill, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was portrayed as a man who cares about health care, “Democrats digging in, refusing to cave until Republicans agree to reverse Medicaid cuts and extend Obamacare subsidies to keep premiums from increasing for millions.”

In his soundbite, Schumer claimed, “Failure to act would be devastating, and Republicans know it, even Donald Trump knows it.”

What Wang does not mention is that the Obamacare subsidies being discussed are actually a Biden-era expansion that was supposed to be a temporary COVID-relief measure that Democrats themselves sunset in order to save money to appease former Sen. Joe Manchin.

Democrats like to say that if the subsidies are not extended, people who rely on the exchanges will see their premiums go up an average of 75 percent, but Wang took it a step further as she introduced, “Kristin Fuhrmann-Simmons in Maine, who is battling MS, says if the Obamacare subsidies expire her premiums could go up 169 percent and her health could suffer.”

Christy doesn’t actually dispute any of the claims made in the report.

Clay Waters complained that right-wing OMB director Russ Vought’s creepy obsession with slashing the federal budget was noted:

The Atlantic’s take-over of PBS’s weekly journalist roundtable has formed a closed circle of liberal grievance. After Washington Week with The Atlantic moderator Jeffrey Goldberg cracked jokes about Rep. Mike Lee’s (R-UT) comment about Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought wanting to shut down the government “since puberty.” He said “I remember when I was undergoing puberty, I wanted to slash the workforce at Medicare and Medicaid myself, personally.”

Waters then tried to equivocate: “Is it ‘devastating’ to federal employees if they’re off the job for seven or eight days? If it is, aren’t the Democrats at least half-responsible?” He then huffed that a reference to the slogan “the cruelty is the point” when describing right-wing efforts to destroy government and the people it helps comes from ” wacky 2018 take by left-wing Atlantic writer Adam Serwer.” But in writing about that article at the time, Waters didn’t dispute the accuracy of that take, let alone demonstrate how it’s “wacky.”

Houck cheered a non-right-wing outlet for nodding toward the right-wing narrative, touting how NBC went after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries “on his past statements about government shutdowns and Democrats refusing to reopen it.” He concluded with his own fit of huffing: “?If the shutdown continues to drag on, it’ll be worth monitoring whether any degree of scrutiny toward the left would continue or whether NBC and co. would resort to decades-old talking points blaming the right for shutdowns.” Houck didn’t explain how those “talking points” aren’t true.

Intern Isaac White continued the narrative in an Oct. 6 post:

Monday’s Morning Joe brought MSNBC viewers a confounding explanation for the ongoing government shutdown by creating a political paradox: Republicans were completely at fault, but Democrats were preventing the shutdown from ending.

NBC News national affairs analyst John Heilemann laid out the first component of the paradox:

[…]

Johnson did not, as Heilemann contended, rearrange the playing field to place Republicans in a more favorable light. The Continuing Resolution passed by the House was practically identical to the most recent CR passed in March, and was thus “clean.”

Accurately defining terms in order to win an argument wasn’t losing. Twisting the truth when you couldn’t win based on facts was a sign of losing.

[…]

This shutdown was one of, if not the only, area where Democrats had been able to successfully resist Republicans during Trump’s second term. Democrats had lamented the thousands of federal workers who were going without pay, yet refused to back down on partisan tactics.

This is the crux of the paradox: Republicans, since they were the majority party across all three branches, should not be allowing the shutdown to happen; but Democrats shouldn’t back down!

It’s hard to make those two points square without ignoring reality. And in Heilemann’s own words, “But the reality is they don’t want, really, to fund this government.”

Steve Malzberg — the right-wing radio host who now fancies himself a “media researcher” — complained that a key right-wing talking point on the shutdown, that Democrats want to give health care to undocumented immigrants, got corrected in real time:

Last Thursday morning, as the government shutdown began it’s second day, House Speaker Mike Johnson was holding a news conference and speaking on various aspects of the issue. But a funny thing happened to Speaker Johnson, and to those watching him on both CNN and MSNBC. He was interrupted, taken away, replaced by, and then “corrected” by the anchors in place at each respective network. Why? To prevent the distribution of “misinformation” by Johnson! I kid you not.

[…]

This is so outrageous but certainly not unfamiliar. How many times have these two networks either cut away from a Donald Trump speech or Q & A session? How many times have they not broadcast any of it at all? When have we ever seen CNN or MSNBC cut out of a Joe Biden, or Kamala Harris or Chuck Schumer presser, or cut away from Hakeem Jeffries, or any Democrat, to “prevent misinformation” from being dispersed? When have we seen CNN or MSNBC anchors say, “that’s just not true”, following a claim from a Democrat?

It certainly looks like the instructions were out. For CNN and MSNBC to cut away from Mike Johnson while he was discussing one particular topic, and to have their similar “disclaimers” ready to go seems like more than just a coincidence. What is wasn’t, was journalism.

It certainly looks like Malzberg was following instructions from the Trump Regime Media powers that be to defend Trump’s shutdown no matter what.

Lame ‘study’

The MRC continued to stick to the approved Trump Regime Media narratives on the government shutdown:

• ABC Harps on Caller to Speaker Johnson, Argues He’s Kept Gov’t Closed, Checks Withheld

• ABC’s Rachel Scott Pitches In, Runs a Democrat-Coded Shutdown Report

• ABCDNC IS AT IT AGAIN: Rachel Scott Delivers More Shutdown Agitprop

• CNN’s Shutdown ‘Town Hall’ Was Mostly an Infomercial for Socialism

• Whoa! CNN’s Dana Bash Presses Jeffries on Government Shutdown and Mamdani

• PBS Whines Trump, GOP Won’t Buckle On Shutdown

• CBS Torches Bernie Sanders Over Government Shutdown, Americans Not Trusting Democrats

• MSNBC Struggles to Find Illegality with Government Stretching Dollars

It wouldn’t be an MRC narrative without a lame “study” to support it, and Joseph Vazquez obliged in an Oct. 14 post:

With all the media banter surrounding the ongoing government shutdown, ABC, CBS and PBS NewsHour seem to have conveniently forgotten that the national debt was even a major issue in this whole mess. Perhaps by emphasizing the multitrillion-dollar debt at all, the networks would be putting the Democrats in the hot seat for continuing to drag their feet on the negotiations.

MRC Business researchers analyzed Nexis transcripts between the start of the shutdown on October 1 to October 10, and found that none of the ABC, CBS, or PBS broadcasts even bothered to mention the national “debt” during that time period. (NBC transcripts weren’t available.)

Reuters pointed out October 12 that the whole shutdown debate is “ignoring” the $37.6 trillion debt, a devastating “risk to U.S. stability.” In fact, reported Reuters, “independent analysts warn that the U.S. finds itself in a deteriorating fiscal position, with debt growing faster than the economy, interest payments on debt crowding out spending for programs and financial weakness threatening social trust funds for the elderly.”

You’d think that if Vazquez was so concerned ab out the national debt, he’d mention that it went by nearly $8 trillion during Trump’s first term. But he didn’t. He also failed to analyze Fox News or any other right-wing channel for their debt-related coverage. Instead, he lectured:

But we shouldn’t be surprised by the media covering up a major turning point of an ongoing national issue because it serves their pathetic, long-running modus operandi of covering for Democratic politicians as much as possible, even when the amount of egg on their face is too obvious to ignore. They only care about the deficit or the national debt when the Democrats want to use the issue.

As if Vazquez isn’t covering for Republican politicians and invoking the debt solely because he thinks it will help that narrative.

Comedy cop mode

Alex Christy played comedy cop in an Oct. 7 post:

An exasperated Jon Stewart condemned Republicans on Monday’s episode of The Daily Show on Comedy Central for not folding to Democratic demands to end the government shutdown because, in his mind, Democrats simply oppose people dying.

Stewart teed up a clip of ABC White House correspondent Rachel Scott by insisting Democrats are not demanding much, “Now, as you’ll recall, the shutdown began because in order to pass a budget bill in the Senate, you need 60 votes. As the Founders never mentioned. And so, Democrats have come forth with a laundry list of demands to force the Republicans—I’m just kidding—they want, like, two things.”

In the video, Scott claimed Democrats are “demanding that Republicans reverse cuts to Medicaid and extend expiring Obamacare subsidies to prevent insurance premiums from rising for some 20 million Americans.”

A sarcastic Stewart reacted, “Those bastards,” before adding, “It’s like they don’t even want people to die of generally preventable disease.”

Stewart never did mention that the expanded subsidies were a Biden-era program that removed the cap on recipients making more than 400 percent of the federal poverty level and were meant to be a temporary COVID relief measure.

Instead, Stewart attacked Republicans for allegedly being sore winners.

Christy stayed on partisan comedy patrol the next day:

ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel found a strange, new respect for Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a woman he has frequently dubbed “Klan Mom,” on his Tuesday show as he claimed a recent tweet from Greene proved his point that Republicans are lying about health care amid the government shutdown.

Kimmel claimed, “The reason the Democrats refuse to sign this budget agreement is because it will cause millions of Americans to lose their health care. Republicans deny this.”

However, Kimmel used Greene to say Republicans are liars:

[…]

What Greene omitted and Kimmel continues to omit is that the Obamacare subsidies being discussed removed the cap that limited recipients to those making 400 percent of the federal poverty level for what was supposed to be a temporary COVID relief measure. That means that even if the subsidies were to expire, a family of two making $84,600 could still be eligible.

Christy’s comedy-cop routine continued in an Oct. 9 post:

NBC’s Seth Meyers devoted Wednesday’s “Closer Look” segment on Late Night to how the government shutdown has affected air traffic control. At the end, Meyers blamed Republicans for not caving to Democrats’ demands on extending the Biden-era Obamacare subsidies.

Meyers introduced a pair of clips by bringing back his favorite tradition: praising Sen. Bernie Sanders, “As a reminder, this shutdown is happening because of health care. Premiums are about to skyrocket. Democrats just want to extend the subsidies that will prevent that from happening. Republicans admit it’s a problem and claim they’ll negotiate after the government reopens. But Senator Bernie Sanders isn’t so sure.”

[…]

Throughout this shutdown, the liberal comedians have dutifully stood behind Democratic efforts to extend the Obamacare subsidies, but not once has any of them pointed out that these were meant to be a temporary COVID relief measure. Nor has anyone referenced that the Biden-era program removed the original cap that limited recipients to those who make 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level.

Of course, Republicans could negotiate with Democrats over the amount of the subsidies, but they have refused to do so. Christy didn’t mention that.