the Media Research Center’s Trump Regime Media routine on the government shutdown has extended to its Free Speech America operation, which dutifully complained that various tech websites failed to be right-wing shills. Gabriela Pariseau huffed in a Sept. 30 post:
It is not looking good for Democrats after they refused to compromise on a deal to fund the government in the upcoming months, but as per usual, their favorite fixer, Google, is on it.
On Tuesday, the search giant’s publishing arm, Google News, propped up a whole host of leftist sources, including NPR, Politico and The New York Times, which deflected Democrats’ role in forcing a likely government shutdown in Google’s Top stories. Not a single right-leaning news outlet appeared on the Google News home page.
In its “Top Stories” section, Google included an NPR piece headlined “Government to shut down after midnight barring last minute breakthrough in Congress.” In the article, NPR arranged its framing to paint Democrats as caring and altruistic for attempting to extend funding for Obamacare — all the while smearing President Donald Trump as a bigot who won’t compromise.
The outlet specifically complained about a meme video Trump posted on Truth Social. “He posted a racist AI-generated video on social media,” the author wrote, adding: “This was accompanied by a vulgar, crudely deep-faked voiceover of Schumer denigrating Democrats.”
Pariseau didn’t explain how, exactly, those Trump meme videos were not “racist” or “vulgar” or why it was it was a “smear” to point that out.
Pariseau grumbled the next day:
Apple and Microsoft joined Google on Wednesday in ignoring right-leaning news about the government shutdown.
All three Big Tech aggregator websites failed to include right-leaning news sources on Wednesday and instead propped up the leftist, legacy media. Apple News, Google News and MSN News collectively shared articles from leftist sources like ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, Reuters, The Associated Press, The Guardian and Axios, each of which framed their stories in such a way that blamed Republicans for the current government shutdown and highlighted the human cost.
Apple, Google and MSN’s promotion of leftist sources comes after Senate Democrats refused to pass a continuing resolution that would extend government funding through Nov. 21.
Note that Pariseau disparagingly refers to non-right-wing outlets as “leftist” but right-wing outlets as merely “right-leaning” — that alone tells us the bias she’s imparting here. She went on to complain that certain articles wouldn’t push the Trump narrative that Democrats must be blamed for the shutdown:
Microsoft’s MSN News highlighted just one article on the federal government shutdown coming from CBS News. The article emphasized the previous shutdown in 2018, which lasted “34 days” and impacted Christmas holiday travel. The CBS piece completely omitted why the shutdown occurred in the first place.
Promoted by Google News, Axios published one of the worst articles with the headline “Democrats take the fight to Trump on government shutdown,” pointing the finger from the get-go. In its very first sentence, Axios wrote: “Republicans are banking on Democrats blinking first to end a government shutdown. But just in case, they’re going to make it as painful as possible.” The leftist outlet went on to note that furloughs for government workers could turn into “mass firings.” Only later does the Axios author point out that “Democrats feel like they’ve got nothing to lose,” and Senate Republicans see Democrats’ stipulations as “holding government funding hostage.”
Google additionally elevated The Associated Press which piled on the Trump administration, noting that this is the “third” government shutdown during a Trump presidency and that “His record underscores the polarizing divide over budget priorities in a political climate that rewards hard-line positions rather than more traditional compromises.”
When immediately moving to talk about blame for the shutdown, AP began by claiming that “The Democrats picked this fight” but went on to simultaneously alleged that “Republicans have refused to negotiate,” as if the ones who pick the fight should not be in the hot seat to negotiate or compromise.
Pariseau did not explain why failure to parrot right-wing narratives on the shutdown makes an outlet automatically “leftist.”
Tom Olohan played gotcha with AI bots again in an Oct. 8 post:
Big Tech is feeding Americans a partisan and hypocritical narrative about the current government shutdown. In fact, three AI chatbots took Sen. Chuck Schumer’s side in blaming Republicans for the ongoing shutdown.
Citing heinously biased sources to justify their contradictory and partisan opinions, three of the world’s most used artificial intelligence chatbots went so far as to blame Republicans for both the 2013 and 2025 government shutdowns. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Meta AI, and xAI Grok, all spun the issue with the help of leftist media sources such as Wikipedia and the recently defunded National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) to blame Republicans for not funding the federal government.
These sources included a horrific Wikipedia article about the 2013 shutdown, citing a who’s who of leftist and legacy media sources such as The Washington Post, MSNBC and The New York Times. Wikipedia even suggested that Republicans tried to shut down the government over birth control, saying that members of Congress demanded “cuts in federal funding for Planned Parenthood and other birth-control providers.” Birth control? Republicans wished to and now have stripped taxpayer dollars from an organization responsible for killing millions of unborn babies.
Olohan never explained how Republicans were not to blame, but he whined that they were blamed anyway:
Arguably, the worst among the three that blamed the GOP for the current government shutdown was ChatGPT. ChatGPT astoundingly blamed 2025 Republicans for the precise behavior of 2025 Democrats. ChatGPT explained that Republicans were at fault because they “control the White House and both chambers of Congress and have refused to pass a ‘clean’ funding measure — adding policy demands instead — many analysts argue they bear the greater share of responsibility in 2025.” [Emphasis added.]
After mixing up basic facts for 2025, ChatGPT made similar accusations about the previous shutdown. Altman’s twisted creation pointed the finger at the 2013 Republicans for refusing to pass a “clean” continuing resolution and making policy demands. ChatGPT blamed Republicans for that shutdown as well, listing Wikipedia as the only source for the chatbot’s answer.
When MRC researchers asked Meta AI about the 2025 shutdown, the AI chatbot outsourced its answer to an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. Evidently, if a poll shows that people believe something, then it must be true. Quid est veritas? And when Meta AI again blamed Republicans for 2013, it cited different polling put out by The Washington Post and leftist Wikipedia.
Only one chatbot had the chutzpah to explain why it blamed Republicans for both supporting a “clean” continuing resolution in 2025 and opposing one in 2013: Grok.
Grok blamed Republicans for offering a “clean” continuing resolution that was blocked by Democrats. The chatbot insisted that Republicans reverse parts of the 2025 rescission package and extend Obamacare subsidies. Absurdly, the chatbot then condemned Republicans in 2013 for refusing to support a “clean” continuing resolution that did not defund or delay Obamacare. To bash Republicans this year, Grok cited leftist and legacy media sources like Politico, BBC, The Guardian, NBC News, PBS, The New York Times and Qatar’s Al Jazeera.
Meanwhile, all six chatbots had no problem blaming Republicans for the 2013 government shutdown, but not a single one blamed Democrats for the ongoing (2025) government shutdown. Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s Copilot and communist Chinese DeepSeek each blamed the GOP for the 2013 shutdown but punted when asked about the current shutdown.
Still, the MRC’s nepo-baby leader ran to a right-wing radio show to promote this gotcha exercise:
Media Research Center President David Bozell joined The Lars Larson Show Thursday night to expose how AI chatbots are unfairly blaming Republicans for the 2025 government shutdown.
Bozell revealed that MRC’s Free Speech America team put major AI chatbots—including ChatGPT, Meta AI, and X’s Grok—to the test by asking a simple, one-word question: “Who is more responsible for the 2025 government shutdown—Republicans or Democrats?”
“All blamed Republicans for the 2025 shutdown,” Bozell told Larson, “and they just cite Democrat-friendly outlets like NPR, PBS, which are still among us, at least for the time being, temporarily, and Wikipedia, as their sources.”
Bozell warned that as AI becomes more integrated into everyday life, its left-leaning slant poses serious implications for how Americans access and interpret information.
Bozell, like Olohan, did not explain how, exactly, Republicans cannot be blamed for the shutdown even though they control both Congress and the presidency.