As a member in good standing of Trump Regime Media, the Media Research Center knew the narrative it had to push regarding a government shutdown: blame it on Democrats and accuse anyone to blames it on President Trump and Republicans of being Democratic shills. Alex Christy set that narrative in a Sept 27 post:
After a Friday World News Tonight report on the possibility of a government shutdown, ABC might need to rename its network DNC because throughout the segment, host David Muir and White House correspondent Rachel Scott combined to utter the phrase “Democrats say” three times while never once using the equivalent “Republicans say.”
[…]Scott began by trying to pin the lack of progress on President Trump, “Tonight, President Trump refusing to meet with Democrats to prevent a government shutdown now looming just five days away.”
She then parroted Muir, “Democrats say they’re trying to protect Medicaid and prevent health insurance premiums from going up for millions. But Republicans won’t budge. The White House instead threatening mass layoffs of federal workers. In past shutdowns, workers were furloughed and returned to their jobs when the government reopened. But now the administration is directing agencies to consider firing employees from programs that are not consistent with the president’s priorities.”
Proceeding to triple down on Democratic talking points, Scott tried to explain how, “Democrats call that intimidation, insisting they won’t back off their demands that Republicans reverse Medicaid cuts and extend expiring Obamacare subsidies so health insurance premiums don’t rise for some 20 million Americans.”
At some point, somebody should’ve pointed out the view from the other side, which is that those subsidies are a Biden-era policy that was supposed to be temporary because they were sold as COVID relief measures.
Joseph Vazquez unironically groused about someone else’s narrative in a Sept. 29 post:
CNN senior reporter Matt Egan stepped in it again by completely upending the narrative his network has been selling to Americans for years that a government shutdown would be disastrous for the economy.
Egan foolishly tried to paint what he caricatured as the potential, horrific effects of the ongoing turmoil over government funding as being unique to President Donald Trump’s bureaucratic gutting policies. “Government shutdowns usually don’t hurt the economy. This time could be different,” read Egan’s September 29 shocking headline.
Using examples like the 2018-2019 government shutdown, Egan argued that “Whatever economic damage occurs during that time tends to be limited and quickly fixed,” a trend which he claims Trump’s mass firing of federal workers, specifically, could totally reverse.
Here’s the problem: CNN has repeatedly stipulated in the past that government shutdowns were terrible, especially when Republicans in the House of Representatives would attempt hardball with the Biden administration and his Democrat cohorts in the Senate over their outrageous spending policies. Now that the onus is on Democrats to quit being stubborn and make a deal with Trump, Egan is now downplaying the effects of government shutdowns writ large and making it appear that any negative effects would effectively be Trump’s fault.
You know who else flip-flopped on a shutdown narrative? The former “news” division run by Vazquez’s employer. During the 2018 shutdown, CNSNews.com had to flip-flop on the fly to reinforce Trump’s own changing shutdown narratives, and when Trump eventually chose to blame the shutdown on Democrats, CNS flip-flopped with him. Needless to say, Vazquez was silent about this.
Curtis Houck returned to reinforcing the narrative in a Sept. 30 post:
Despite the only group standing in the way of averting a government shutdown at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Wednesday are Senate Democrats, ABC, CBS, and NBC have all taken their side in demanding a permanent extension of ObamaCare subsides that were meant to be temporary during the pandemic (along with a whole host of other goodies, including refunding PBS and NPR).
Shutdowns have long been something the liberal media blame Republicans for and this impending October 2025 shutdown seems to be no different in catering exclusive to Democrats and using covert partisan activists masquerading as everyday Americans to deliver emotional blackmail.
ABC’s Good Morning America is a near-constant starting point for network round-ups on NewsBusters and Tuesday’s show was no exception in its slanted framing, starting with co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos teaming up with deep-seated Trump-hater Rachel Scott:
[…]Scott framed congressional Democrats as though they’re gladiators facing treacherous Republicans. Notice near the end of the video as she touted a military spouse as seemingly normal when, in reality, she’s a “food insecurity” advocate for military families. While not a left-right issue, it nonetheless should have been disclosed:
If Houck doesn’t think that food insecurity for military families isn’t a “left-right issue,” why is he treating it as if it is? He continued to whine:
Finally going to CBS, they lacked both the partisan rancor of CBS and the disconnect between newscasts of NBC. That said, they will still ready, willing, and able to be partisan hands:
Houck grumbled that CBS interviewed two people to critique the shutdown — one who recently resigned as a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official because of its emerging anti-vaxxer attitudes, which to Houck’s biased ear somehow “left little to imagination about her politics.” Houck rooted through her X account to declare her “a blue-blooded resistance liberal” and “a partisan activist looking to undermine any and all changes to public health.” Becuase she doesn’t want changes to public health driven by right-wing partisanship and people who reject science? Apparently so.