On August 5, Vice President J.D. Vance announced - at a roundtable meeting - that the White House Anti-Fraud Task Force had uncovered and halted billions of taxpayer dollars being wasted on fraudulent spending.
The amount of money saved was jaw-dropping.
The Vice President broke down the numbers in an op-ed for the August 5 Washington Post:
“Since Inauguration Day, our administration has taken a sledgehammer to fraud. We’ve uncovered an estimated $230 billion in fraud across Medicare, Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the pandemic-era loan measures such as the Paycheck Protection Program, and other federal benefits. On an annualized basis, our internal analyses indicate that we’ve already halted $56 billion in fraudulent spending from going out the door. And thanks to the efforts of our federal, state and local partners, we’ve secured an additional estimated $55 billion in indictments, settlements and civil penalties.”
Given the size and scope of the fraud uncovered and the fact that the VP detailed it in an op-ed in a paper of record for the elitist media, surely the legacy broadcast networks would cover the whopping totals.
So how much time did ABC, CBS, NBC devote to this big win for the Trump administration and the American taxpayer?
Zero seconds.
MRC analysts looked at ABC, CBS and NBC’s evening and morning news programs (from August 5 through the morning of August 11) and found the networks couldn’t manage even a single mention of the billions saved by the White House Anti-Fraud task force.
If the broadcast networks cared even a little bit about the amount of taxpayer dollars saved by the White House’s efforts, they could’ve relayed some of the examples detailed by the Vice President in his op-ed:
“Over four short months, we and our agency partners have suspended hundreds of fraudulent hospice and home health providers in California and other states, disqualified thousands of fraudulent SNAP retailers, and suspended states from participating in federal programs because of poor oversight, deferred billions of dollars in questionable state reimbursements, and referred more than $22 billion in fraudulent pandemic-era loans for collection.”...
“The facts in some of these cases are sickening. In one example from the Minneapolis area, a disabled American needed 24-hour care, which he sought from a Medicaid program administered by the state. But he received nothing. A fraudster had instead been billing the program for more than $1 million in nonexistent services. The victim was found dead. The fraudster had billed for his care right up until the day before.”
“In another case prosecuted in my home state of Ohio, federal and state prosecutors in June indicted members of an alleged $30 million Medicaid fraud ring, charged with billing families for children’s behavioral health services — without ever so much as lifting a finger to provide real care. Instead, prosecutors said, they used the proceeds to go on a spending spree, buying a Maserati, a McLaren and a dozen other luxury cars.”
Either the elitist media are so anti-Trump that they refuse to grant the administration any wins or maybe they’re a little upset that the gravy-train of fraudulent handouts has been derailed.
For this study, MRC analysts looked at the broadcast evening (ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News), morning news shows (ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS Mornings, NBC Today) from August 5 through the morning of August 11.
