Posted on 03/13/2017 5:18:50 PM PDT by Kaslin
Who can forget when the media spent endless days of outrage hyperventilating that Republicans would “shutdown the government” in 2013? Well the media had quite the opposite reaction Monday when Democrats threatened to do the same thing, not even two months into Trump’s presidency.
n a letter to Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell Monday, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other top Democrats warned Republicans that they would obstruct any budget that allowed funding for a border wall or took away funding from the EPA, before the current resolution to fund the government is up April 28.
Schumer has made similar threats in recent months. Dem. Chris Coons even touted shutting down the government as a Democratic “weapon” on CNN a week ago. Yet the media has been largely silent on the issue.
None of the big three networks or cable news networks found time to cover the story Monday morning. It’s not as if the announcement was unbeknownst to the media. CBS’ online website did two stories on it in the past two days; only describing the threat as a benign “warning” to Republicans.
However, the networks weren’t even close to this calm when Republicans were the minority party. Let’s take a trip down memory lane.
Democrats threatening to shut down government. Wondering if MSM will cover the same way @GOP shutdown was covered: https://t.co/IngNs5cP2n — Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) March 13, 2017
Every couple of years during the Obama era, the media had a conniption over a potential government shutdown when both parties couldn’t come to a compromise on federal funding. But of course, it was all the Republicans’ fault, every time.
The most recent case came in 2013 when the media hyped a possible shutdown for months on end. Despite the fact that Senate Democrats refused to confirm the budget passed in the House, ABC News took their reporting cues from the Democrats in the White House:
KARL: The White House response was swift, George, to Jay Carney saying, “Today Republicans in the House of Representatives moved to shut down the government.” And it's hard to disagree with that because the Senate absolutely will not pass what just passed in the House.
Eventually the government did shut down for just two weeks and the media’s outrage didn’t stop. During those two weeks ABC, CBS, and NBC blamed Republicans 41 times for the shutdown; not even once blaming Democrats.
The three networks played sob stories night after night of all the negative effects of the shutdown supposedly caused by Republicans.
On NBC’s Nightly News October 3, 2013, anchor Brian Williams whined, “All kinds of people are getting cheated out of salaries, benefits, medical treatment.” NBC then showcased a child with cancer whose hopes for recovery were dashed because drug trials were halted due to the cut to the NIH funding. Yet NBC purposefully didn’t mention that Republicans voted to restore funding to the NIH the day before and were stopped by Senate Democrats. So who really deserved the blame?
Brian Williams didn’t mince words again October 14, when he deliberately laid blame on Republicans:
WILLIAMS: This current showdown and this current government shutdown traces its history back to a determined core of GOP House members who are vehemently against ObamaCare and were willing to shut down the government because of it.
After the shutdown was over, Williams still couldn’t stop blaming Republicans for the “grave” and irreparable “damage” they inflicted on the American people.
“[I]t’s widely agreed to have been a big loss and self-inflicted wound, mostly for the Republican Party,” he scolded.
Towards the end of October, NBC was still complaining about the shutdown. CNBC correspondent Bertha Coombs hyped that it could be “the Grinch that stole Christmas” for families affected by the two week shutdown.
Today’s Bryant Gumbel also openly blamed Republicans.
GUMBEL: Yeah, but I called it the GOP shutdown....I thought it was a false equivalency for people to say it was a government shutdown, a failure of government. It was not. It was a few individuals who were trying to extort the government.
Time will tell how the media reacts if Democrats take responsibility for shutting down the government next month. But if history is any indicator, the silence of the media so far reveals it will be a much different reaction.
Similar situations happened in 2011 and 2012 and were heavily hyped by the media, but government shutdowns were averted in last-minute deals.
they’ve been trying to shut gov’t down since 1/20/17. yawn.
In the past, even the possibility of a GOP-led "shutdown of the Government" was attacked as the most irresponsible action ever taken in human history, that would result in starvation, the collapse of the economy, the collapse of the world economy, the deaths of elderly patients in nursing homes, and the outbreak of mayhem from coast to coast.
Democrat after Democrat was given his or her turn at the microphone to denounce and excoriate the Republicans for even considering such a course of action, and to explain that this is why the Republican Party can never be trusted to run the Federal Government, or anything else.
The Demonuts think everyone will join them and condemn Trump . Schumer lives in a backward world
Old bird flipping Fred Rogers. Funniest thing I have ever seen!!!
Shut down the swamp? Use it as an occasion to drain it
And 90% of the reason the corrupt MSM got away with scolding the GOPe is because the GOPe leaders (McConnell and Boehner or Ryan) were constantly running to every microphone like the scared hostage they were pledging to never shut the government down.
The GOPe are pathetic cowards who have never seen a fight they didn’t running screaming and crying from. To them NOTHING was ever worth fighting for — nothing. It was foremost that the NYTimes and WaPo editorial boards were kept placated.
This just proves that they were constantly wrong for not ever standing up to the bullies.
Winning will continue for the duration of the government shutdown, after which it will continue.
Trump should take the opportunity to permanently eliminate non-essential positions and bureaucrats.
We who are about to live without gubment salute you!
We hit the debt ceiling.
Schummer shuts down the Government
All the employees go home
Invite 5% of the employees back.
Run the Country under 0bama’s Continuing Resolution>aka decide how much to spend and where to spend the money
Hell hath no fury like
a voter scorned. Keep
it up Chuck...most
conservative Bible
clinging gun lovers
I know, have excellent
memories...
The Dims will win big on this. They will engineer the shutdown and pin the blame on Pubbies who will then collapse into a quivering pile of shite and yield to the Dims.
A shut-down is only successful if it’s 20 days or less. If we ever reach a shut-down where things actually do stay shut down for a minimum of 60 days (perhaps even 120 days), then a fair number of people will realize it’s not a big deal....and that we don’t need all these people in DC.
I think Trump wants the shutdown to occur, and he’ll handpick what stays open.
If we make it to 120 days...the people affected probably should go ahead and start looking for work because they probably won’t be coming back.
LOL. Then we'll see how unimportant most governemnt jobs are. Go ahead, shut it down!
The Dems might not like how Trump responds. He has an incentive to shut down those things which would maximally upset Democrats.
I would like for him to announce on the day of the shutdown that NO grant money will be released to any university or Dem city.
“Keep it up Chuck...”
You can bet he will, in spades, along with all his other Progressive cohorts.
IMHO
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.