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.
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.