The longtime modus operandi of the Media Research Center is that merely saying anything even remotely positive about a Democratic politician automatically makes you part of the “liberal media.” And that’s the way the MRC treated President Biden’s address to Congress on April 28. Nicholas Fondacaro set the tone in a pre-speech item:
With just a few hours until President Biden delivered his first address to Congress on Wednesday, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News couldn’t hold back their excitement as they trumpeted Biden’s call for an additional $4 trillion in federal spending on mostly liberal pet projects. CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell kicked off the newscast by celebrating the return of big government, while NBC’s Lester Holt parroted Biden’s on-the-record comments attacking Republicans.
O’Donnell was arguably the most excited by the prospects of Biden’s massive spending spree, soon to be $6 trillion total. “25 years after Bill Clinton declared that the era of big government is over, President Biden will argue the opposite,” she cheered, “saying that ‘Government still works’ and can deliver for the people, as he attempts to sell trillions of dollars in new federal spending on everything from universal pre-K and free community college to elder care and infrastructure.”
As for Holt, he started his program with a tacit admission that he was working as a puppet of the administration as they fought against the congressional Republicans:
Fondacaro would never say that, by the same standard, Fox News was a puppet for the Trump administration for the past four years. But then, he’s a right-wing puppet too.
Speaking of puppets, Curtis Houck acted like one in echoing Fondacaro in another pre-speech item:
Showing they were so enthralled with President Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress before he even said a word, ABC and NBC had already started on Wednesday night gushing over his plans, bringing out movie trailer-like opens and boasting of his “hope for an America returning to normal” filled with an agenda that’s extremely “popular” with all Americans.
After the speech, the MRC issued its usual predictable anti-media attacks on anyone who refuses to hate Biden as much it does:
- ‘Rose to the Moment’; NBC Trumpets Biden’s ‘Remarkable Speech’ With a ‘Popular’ Agenda
- CBS Lauds ‘Progressive’ Biden’s ‘Bold,’ ‘Bipartisan’ Speech Built on ‘Simplicity’
- Seriously? ABC Trumpets ‘Pragmatic’ Biden’s ‘Make America Feel Good Night’
- MSNBC Raves Biden’s ‘Brilliant’ ‘Superpower’ Is Being a Radical Who’s ‘Boring’
- Media Bowled Over By Biden’s ‘Bold,’ ‘Ambitious’ Agenda
- Morning Joe Swoons Over Biden Speech: Reagan Era ‘Officially Ended Last Night’
- NY Times Hails Big-Spending Biden: ‘Transformational Figure in American History’?
The MRC’s resident would-be insult comic minus the “comic” part, Gabriel Hays, raged against Biden’s speech and anyone working in entertainment who liked it:
President Joe Biden’s first speech to a joint session of Congress on April 28 was completely devoid of substance, and filled with cheap platitudes intended to get slow-witted Americans to consent to less freedom and even bigger government. Of course, Hollywood loved the hell out of it.
These entertainers are as shallow and mendacious as they come. The liar-in-chief is a man after their own hearts. Actors like Jeffrey Wright, Alyssa Milano, and Rob Reiner turned on the melodrama in response to Biden’s boring, but radical, speech from Wednesday night. They claimed to be “proud” of Biden and expressed relief that we finally have a president who “cares about us.”
One even mentioned that they were “ugly crying” because they were so happy he was president. These people need to get lives.
MRC chief Brent Bozell even got the chance to rant about Biden and the media in a cushy solo appearance on Fox Business (though curiously omitting the network’s name from the post on it):
According to Brent Bozell, journalists are either “fully vested” in the radical socialism of Joe Biden or they are simply lying with their spin of the Democrat’s “bold,” “ambitious” agenda. Appearing on Varney and Co. Thursday, the MRC president declared, “What Joe Biden is recommending makes Barack Obama a piker by comparison. For them to say he was pragmatic, for them to say this was feel-good, for them to say this was bipartisan, these are lies, Stuart. These are lies.”
Calling out the complicit press, he added, “They know it. Or… if they’re not lies, they’re fully vested in socialism themselves. This is not a news media anymore.” He concluded, “Look, last night what did we see by any objective America sure? You saw the proposal for the greatest expansion of the federal government in the history of the United States of America.”
We don’t recall Bozell attacking Fox News as being “complicit” with or “fully vested” in the Trump administration and right-wing politics.