This is how the mainstream media should cover politicians. It is not taking sides or creating a false balance. Republicans did lie and flee.
Republicans lied & fled
One must commend MSNBC’s Alicia Menendez report on Texas Republicans and Texas Democrats and the contrasts in what they found important during this crisis. Too often, if they have to point out something negative on the Republican side, they attempt to find something negative on the Democratic side that is generally a false equivalence.
Menendez did not even consider doing that.
“On the federal level, help is happening,” Alicia Menendez said. “But on the state level, a different story. Since this all began, Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s story has changed several times. The story he tells depends on the network he’s speaking to, like local news stations across Texas where he called for an investigation into the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. That council manages the state’s energy flow. He called on the council’s leadership to resign but then on Fox News, the Governor pointed his finger elsewhere, somehow drawing a line to connect his state’s power failures on renewable energy and the green new deal, which is still a proposal, not a law.”
After she played a video of him lying, he continued.
“What you just heard is a blatant mischaracterization,” Menendez said. The president of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas says multiple energy sources failed during the storm, from wind and solar to coal and gas plants. Experts have been warning for years this type of power failure could happen but say leaders across Texas failed to take action leaving the state with a stand-alone grid highly vulnerable to extreme weather. It’s a split-screen reality of what leadership can look like in a time of crisis. On one hand, you have mixed messaging from the governor and a state senator who abandons his constituents by heading to Cancun during his state’s greatest hour of need while elected officials inside and outside Texas like congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sylvia Garcia, Sheila Jackson Lee are heading in to help.
Alicia Menendez did not half step. She called it as it was. And in doing so, she shows the difference between a selfish cover-your-rear individualism with compassionate humanity and the vision of collective assistance. There was no false equivalence.