Ron Johnson
In the A-Block of Wednesday’s Hardball, MSNBC host Chris Matthews lost his cool in denouncing Republicans like Congressman Devin Nunes (Calif.) and Senator Ron Johnson (Wisc.) as part of a “group of munchkins” being “pushed around and led around” by their staffs and the White House in publishing the controversial intelligence memos and FBI texts.
CNN’s organizational hypocrisy was on full display Wednesday night as host Erin Burnett kicked off OutFront by declaring that “Republicans are at it again” with their crazy conspiracy theories! Turns out, the alleged conspiracy theory was just a question raised by Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson in his Homeland Security Committee’s interim report on the Clinton e-mail scandal.
In a remarkably oblivious segment during CNN’s The Lead on Thursday, host Jake Tapper and his panel ripped into Congressional Republicans for rushing to use the missing FBI text messages and ‘selective leaks’ to claim conspiracy. The exchange was mind-boggling since CNN conducted its brand of journalism in a similar fashion. It actually allowed them to win three out of their four trophies in President Trump’s Fake News Awards.
On Thursday, it was announced that the missing FBI text messages were recovered and heading to Congress for review. With this development, the liberal media finally had an interest in the story, but they instead pushed a narrative that there was nothing to worry about, there wasn’t a scandal to be had, and anyone arguing as such were being political. And during the evening network newscasts, ABC’s World News Tonight was eager to push that narrative while NBC didn’t cover the development at all.
After completely ignoring for the better part of three days the shocking revelations that the FBI had somehow managed to lose five months worth of text messages, ABC finally found the story during Wednesday’s World News Tonight. And with their late arrival came a heavy spin campaign to make it seem as though it was nothing more than baseless accusations from a panicked Republican Party.
For the second straight day, MSNBC’s Hardball dismissed any and all Republican questions on Wednesday about bias inside the FBI as modern-day McCarthyism that’s a smoke screen “destroying” and “hurting” America. Host Chris Matthews predictably set the tone, referring to Republicans such as Senator Ron Johnson (Wisc.) as “toadies” being ordered by the White House to “do anything to deflect or distract or discredit from Bob Mueller because they think trouble is coming.”
The revelations concerning missing FBI text messages continued to snowball on Tuesday as news trickled out that, via the remaining 50,000 texts, the FBI was home to a so-called “secret society” that began meeting after President Trump was elected. And despite how the revelations have been reported by other major news outlets, the three major network news outlets have been reluctant to cover them. ABC still had yet to report on the missing text messages, NBC was finally dragged to it, and CBS had started to downplay it.
On Wednesday, The New York Times editorial board and Twitter account arguably crossed a line into becoming a grassroots advocacy group, encouraging and providing both readers and Twitter followers with phone numbers to call select Republican Senators in order to defeat the Republican tax plan.
The media's obsession with anything that can be reported negatively on Trump is made so much worse by what they do not report. Networks like CNN refuse to cover stories that do not fit their leftist narrative. Tuesday morning on New Day, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) pointed out the blatant lack of coverage of Fusion GPS's ties to Russia and Debbie Wasserman Schultz's connection to criminal Capitol Hill IT workers.
The Sunday network morning shows were filled with discussion of the health care bill recently released by Senate Republicans on Thursday. That discussion was loaded with fake news about the bill drastically slashing Medicaid, which was being pushed by the program moderators. ABC’s George Stephanopoulos actually yelled at Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway because she refuted it. Meanwhile, on the other networks, GOP Senators were embarrassing their hosts by educating them on what the bill actually did to Medicaid.
On Wednesday's New Day on CNN, host Chris Cuomo wrongly suggested that illegal immigrants commit crime at a rate lower than American citizens as he repeated the recurring myth from the left while debating Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson. As the two discussed President Donald Trump's address to Congress from last night, the CNN host posed: "Immigration was a big theme last night. The fact basis of the President: I want your take on it. 'Lawless chaos.' You know, Senator, that immigrants in this country -- even illegal ones, undocumented ones -- do not commit crimes at the rate that the rest of the citizenry do. 'Lawless chaos.' Fair appraisal?"
On Wednesday's New Day on CNN, as Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson appeared as a guest to discuss the aftermath of Donald Trump's election to the presidency, co-host Chris Cuomo repeatedly pressed his GOP guest on what the new President would do to make it up to those who did not support him who might feel like they were victims of "division and anger" during his campaign.
After Senator Johnson eventually chided Cuomo for "starting out pretty negative today," the CNN host bristled as he lectured back at his GOP guest: "I couldn't agree with you more about keeping the positive, but for you to put it on the media for just repeating what Donald Trump said -- and you ducked for your entire campaign -- is a little hard to swallow."