The Media Research Center had its Trump Regime Media talking points to follow regarding the government shutdown, and one of them was accusing non-right-wing media outlets of following their own talking points. Alex Christy slavishly followed this narrative while playing comedy cop in an Oct. 2 post:
On Wednesday, the late night comedians received their government shutdown-related marching orders. To listen to them is no different than any generic Democratic member of Congress who portrays the shutdown as a showdown between Democrats, who want people to have healthcare, and Republicans, who do not.
On CBS, The Late Show’s Stephen Colbert asked and answered his own question, “So, how did we get to this shutdown? Well, the main sticking point is healthcare. Democrats want people to have it. And they say they will never back down.”
Over at ABC, Jimmy Kimmel’s audience appeared to not know what they were supposed to do. As Kimmel began, there was a confused mix of booing and cheering, “Well, I have some bad news: our government is now officially shut down because we don’t have funding to pay the federal workers. Trump really is running the country like it’s one of his businesses.”
Kimmel added that “Republicans would like you to believe that Democrats shut the government down. But the bill they wanted Democrats to sign would knock out about 15 million Americans from health insurance. If this bill passes, your health insurance premiums could go up 75 percent, so there was no way the Democrats could vote for it. It’s like—it’s like going to dinner and the waiter says, ‘You must order lasagna. The chef made it today. And a bunch of you are going to get food poisoning from it, but if you don’t eat it, you’ve ruined the meal.’ That’s the Garfield version of what’s going on right now.
First, “your” only refers to people on the Obamacare exchanges. Second, these expanded subsidies were a Biden-era program that was meant to be a temporary COVID relief measure that Democrats now want to make permanent because the pandemic, apparently, never ends.
When NBC’s Seth Meyers pointed out that the Democratic proposal “does not provide healthcare for illegal immigrants,” Christy huffed in response: “Counter fact-check: The Democratic proposal does muddy the waters on who is eligible for Medicaid coverage and makes it easy for blue states to decide to expand coverage to illegal immigrants.” His “fact-check” came from the right-wing Heritage Foundation, making it highly suspect.
Curtis Houck similarly whined:
Early Wednesday evening on The Lead, CNN fact-checker and Canadian Daniel Dale teamed up with host Jake Tapper to engage in a sleight of hand to paint Republicans as liars in the government shutdown battle for arguing Democrats want to provide health care for illegal immigrants (which they do).
In essence, Dale told viewers both here and later on AC360 that those receiving free care are aren’t “illegal” because they had been processed and released into the country with a court date or outstanding asylum claim.
“So, is there any truth at all to what they’re saying? Well, CNN’s Daniel Dale is our resident fact checker. Daniel, tell us more about this claim that Republicans are making about what Democrats are fighting for here,” Tapper began.
Dale unsurprisingly declared this claim anywhere “from misleading to flat false” when what Democrats actually want is “an extension of enhanced federal subsidies for insurance purchased through the ObamaCare exchanges that’s scheduled to expire at year’s end.”
He went onto insist “[u]ndocumented people are banned from the ObamaCare exchanges entirely, so therefore they’re banned from the subsidies” as well as “federal Medicaid insurance plans, though some states do provide some state funded coverage”:
[…]After insisting Ronald Reagan made it law, Dale argued taxpayer dollars for illegal immigrants to receive free hospital care is a good thing because “the federal money…goes to hospitals to help them cover the cost of the E.R. visit” and thus not actually “comprehensive health care for undocumented people.”
Christy returned to push the talking point again:
The fact-checking industry likes to view itself as the guardian of truth in an age of rampant misinformation, but what is one to do when they can’t all get on the same page? While PolitiFact, the Associated Press, and CNN’s Daniel Dale all rushed on Wednesday to call Republicans liars for saying Democrats want to give illegal immigrants access to federal benefits in exchange for ending the government shutdown, Factcheck.org was more nuanced, claiming that under GOP definitions of “illegal immigrant,” they could plausibly have a point.
PolitiFact’s Maria Ramirez Uribe could have picked any Republican to give a “false” label, but she settled on Vice President JD Vance. According to Uribe, if Democrats are successful in removing parts of the One Big Beautiful Bill, illegal immigrants will still be ineligible for federal benefits, “The vast majority of federal health care dollars cannot be spent on health care for people in the U.S. illegally. They cannot enroll in Medicaid or Medicare, and they are ineligible to purchase health care coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. A small Medicaid program reimburses hospitals for uninsured emergency care, which can include immigrants in the country illegally but is not exclusive to them.”
Christy concluded with more huffing: “It is bad enough that the fact-checking websites think they should have a say in what other people post online. The fact that Factcheck.org could not unequivocally affirm PolitiFact and AP’s confident anti-Republican claims is just another example why.”
Houck cheered that his new favorite CBS host repeated right-wing talking points:
In a tremendous illustration of how leftists believe the legacy, liberal media are supposed to work for them, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) flashed disgust on Thursday’s CBS Mornings as co-host Tony Dokoupil for stating the truth Democrats have and continue to support taxpayer-funded health care (such as emergency room visits) for “non-citizens” as a condition for ending the government shutdown.
Notice how she scoffed at Dokoupil even going as far as saying the Republican lingo has been “not strictly true,” shouting back “it is a flat-out lie” and “nothing,” “none,” and “zero” going to help illegal immigrants receive care.
To his credit, Dokoupil hung in there and noted the Democratic counter proposal included “a restoration of Medicaid benefits for certain noncitizens that had been taken away in the Big, Beautiful Bill as Republicans put it.”
Intern Isaac White showed how well the MRC had indoctrinated him on right-wing shutdown talking points:
On Wednesday morning, the first day of the government shutdown, Morning Joe stooped as low as it could to mock House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) over the Bible and lie about Republicans exposing illegal immigrant health care coverage.
Co-host Joe Scarborough first gave Johnson the moniker “Mr. I Rule By The Bible,” which Mika Brzezinski chuckled at but quickly collected herself.
Scarborough continued to pick the lowest-hanging fruit he could find, which was debasing Johnson’s faith by connecting it to his alleged lies:
[…]Of course it’s not legal. That doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Republicans were using the fact of illegal immigrants receiving health care as part of a broader argument for why they believe Democrats are responsible for the government shutdown.
Yes, White has been trained well.