FNC's Steve Hilton Highlights Media Blackout on New Trump Executive Order on Jobs

July 24th, 2018 1:50 PM

During Sunday night’s edition of The Next Revolution With Steve Hilton, host Steve Hilton brought up a new initiative put into place by the Trump Administration, led by Ivanka Trump, designed to “train workers for the jobs of the future.” Hilton said that he did analysis on how much coverage the executive order got on the three networks and he reported on his findings: “ABC News: 0, NBC News: 0, CBS News: 0.” It looks like the networks could not take a break from their wall-to-wall Russia hysteria to highlight something that concerns every American: the economy.

On Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order on Workforce Development, establishing the President’s National Council for the American Worker and the American Workforce Policy Board. The signing ceremony took place in the East Room at the White House, featuring representatives from more than 20 companies and organizations signing a “Pledge to America’s Workers,” vowing to invest in training and education for American workers.

 

 

Both President Trump and his daughter Ivanka, who has taken on an advisory role in her father’s White House, weighed in on the new executive order. According to the President, “We want to make sure that we have the workforce development programs we need to ensure that these jobs are being filled by American workers.”

Ivanka Trump said “This will spur much-needed action to provide current and future American workers with the training and job opportunities they will need to succeed in our thriving economy and ensure they are able to achieve success not only today, but throughout their careers.”

While the executive order received no coverage on the three “alphabet soup” networks as Hilton pointed out, major publications and cable news did manage to at least give it an honorable mention. The White House website compiled a list of testimonials about the new executive order from Ivanka Trump during an interview in The Wall Street Journal and from the CEO of Lockheed Martin during an appearance on Fox News. The list also included excerpts of news stories on the executive order from Axios.com and the Associated Press.

In addition to the news outlets listed on whitehouse.gov, CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times also managed to find time and/or space to cover the executive order. While CNN and The Washington Post offered fair analysis of the executive order, the Times described the idea of job training as “one of the few coordinated policy initiatives generated in the West Wing with broad appeal across income and party lines.” In addition, the Times attempted to downplay the significance of the executive order by saying “Most of the companies and organizations in attendance had already planned to greatly increase their job training and apprenticeship programs.” 

As the CNN piece reported, companies who signed the “Pledge to America’s Workers” include FedEx, General Motors, Home Depot, IBM, Microsoft and Walmart. 

According to a recent Gallup poll, less than one percent of Americans consider Russia the nation’s most important problem as opposed to 15 percent of Americans, who consider economic issues the most important problem facing the nation.  If nothing else, this poll highlights how out of touch the media is with the concerns of the “forgotten men and women” President Trump hopes to help through his new executive order that the networks refused to cover.  

A transcript is below. Click "expand" to read more: 

 

The Next Revolution With Steve Hilton

07/23/18

09:45 PM

LISA BOOTHE: Well you’ve also seen under President Trump hundreds of businesses passing savings from the tax reform laws down to employees and President Trump has highlighted those stories at events across the country. So you’ve also seen that. I actually think her biggest gripe and grievance should be against Toys “R” Us and their failure to, their failure to look at the basically changes in, you know, with internet retailers like Amazon and Walmart and their failure to change their business model to keep up because it’s basically Amazon and Walmart’s ability to bring toys at a much cheaper cost that has helped driven Toys “R” Us out of business. So they, their antiquated business model wasn’t able to keep up in a changing economy.

(…)

09:46:18 PM

STEVE HILTON: I want to say something. It’s my show. I want to say something. Which is that that point that Lisa made about the transition to a new economy is so important. And that’s why I’m so…I couldn’t believe the fact that we actually had a really important announcement on that this week from the Trump Administration, led by Ivanka Trump; a new initiative to train workers for the jobs of the future. Do you know how much coverage that got? We did, we did analysis. ABC News: 0, NBC News: 0, CBS News: 0. They are not interested. And yet that is the kind of thing that actually could help with the very good point you made about this big economic transition. I’ve gone on too long.