Correspondent Josh Lederman joined MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson Reports on Thursday to discuss Vice President Harris’s virtual address to abortion providers in pro-life states. During the segment, Lederman would uncritically repeat Harris’s fearmongering on what a post-Roe America would look like.
After being asked by Jackson what the White House hoped to get out of the meeting, Lederman declared that the purpose “was to try to keep a focus on this issue of abortion rights” and that the address was to “abortion providers specifically from states that have passed some of the most extreme abortion restrictions.”
Another purpose was to fearmonger, which Lederman did not fact check, “The vice president using this meeting today as an opportunity to make an argument that we've heard from other White House officials. Namely, that it may not stop with abortion rights. The vice president saying that in the U.S. is going to start taking rights away from people that they have already been granted, the next things to go could be things like contraception or even same-sex marriage.”
Unfortunately for Harris and MSNBC, there is not much the White House can do, “But the reality is, Hallie, there's not that much the White House can actually do about this issue. Aside from continuing to call for Congress to codify Roe v. Wade into law. Something we've already seen is not going to happen. There's not going to be the votes for it. In fact, we saw that in a vote that the vice president in her role as president of the Senate presided over.”
Maybe that is why Lederman didn’t fact check Harris’s alarmism, because the bill that failed in the Senate expanded Roe by allowing abortion for all nine months of pregnancy.
If MSNBC’s liberal viewers were distraught at the news, Lederman was there to try to offer some optimism by concluding, “But the one thing that the White House can do is try to keep this issue front and center for the American people as we get closer to the elections, as poll after poll show, that most Americans do support keeping Roe v. Wade in place. Hallie.”
No matter how many times journalists like Lederman cite polls on Roe it will not change the fact remains that voters support restrictions not permissible under Roe. Such results can only come about because people like Lederman and networks like MSNBC have completely failed to educate Americans on the subject.
This segment was sponsored by Priceline.
Here is a transcript for the May 19 show:
MSNBC Hallie Jackson Reports
5/19/2022
3:42 PM ET
HALLIE JACKSON: For more on this I want to bring in NBC's Josh Lederman. So, Josh, what was White House hoping to see from the meeting.
JOSH LEDERMAN: Well, the goal of the meeting, Hallie, was to try to keep a focus on this issue of abortion rights as we await the Supreme Court decision that if it matches what was in the leaked draft would overturn Roe v. Wade and so the vice president meeting virtually today with abortion providers specifically from states that have passed some of the most extreme abortion restrictions.
States like Oklahoma. States like Texas, Missouri, Kansas, as well as states that have passed those trigger laws that would essentially outlaw abortion the minute that Roe v. Wade is overturned, if it is overturned by the Supreme Court. The vice president using this meeting today as an opportunity to make an argument that we've heard from other White House officials. Namely, that it may not stop with abortion rights. The vice president saying that in the U.S. is going to start taking rights away from people that they have already been granted, the next things to go could be things like contraception or even same-sex marriage.
The vice president saying in that meeting today that “the strength of our country has always been that we move forward in the expansion of rights. And if this happens, it will be an extreme step backwards.” But the reality is, Hallie, there's not that much the White House can actually do about this issue. Aside from continuing to call for Congress to codify Roe v. Wade into law. Something we've already seen is not going to happen. There's not going to be the votes for it. In fact, we saw that in a vote that the vice president in her role as president of the Senate presided over.
But the one thing that the White House can do is try to keep this issue front and center for the American people as we get closer to the elections, as poll after poll show, that most Americans do support keeping Roe v. Wade in place. Hallie.
JACKSON: Josh Lederman, thank you for that, appreciate it.
