The mainstream media rarely goes after Republican lies. Andrea Mitchell did not allow Mike Rounds to lie about the recession. And her husband, former Federal Reserve chair, agrees.
Andrea Mitchell dings Mike Rounds
Watching the Sunday morning national news shows are generally painful. Democrats always seem unprepared with lousy messaging. They never fight back against either biased journalists or lying Right-Wing Republicans. Worse, the programs always seem to be national platforms that the Republicans, the Right-Wing, and MAGA use to misinform and lie without substantive pushback from purported journalists. Sadly, Progressives are generally only given a hearing when some interpret their words as some sort of objection, however minor, to the disagreements with the policies of the Democratic Establishment.
I was pleasantly surprised last week when Dana Bash, more so than the panel, came ready with slides showing an extensive list of President Joe Biden’s policy achievements with a commentary highlighting them. Could the mainstream media be tired of being the conduit for misinformation and misrepresentation?
Last week Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) appeared on a panel with Dana Bash. Richard Blumenthal touted his appearance as an ode to bipartisanship. He was derelict in describing the Inflation Reduction Act. Lindsey Graham was not. Worse, he all but told Blumenthal he has little interest in bipartisanship. And then he laid into Biden and lied about America being in a recession. Blumenthal allowed that lie to go unanswered.
Meet The Press featured another necessary pushback. Andrea Mitchell did a rare thing on the program. She corrected a Republican lie. When Democrats or Progressives mischaracterize anything, however small, these purported journalists always ding them. Well, Mitchell did her job today. She did not allow Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD) to lie about America being in a recession. He likely saw the lie go unanswered last week and tried it with Andrea Mitchell. And he did it trying to show camaraderie with her husband, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alans Greenspan, a Republican.
Mitchell asked Rounds if he thought Trump’s handling of classified information disqualified him from the presidency. As politicians always do, he deflected.
“We’re going to focus on the fact that inflation is still over eight and a half percent, which we’re still talking about GDP, which has been going down,” Rounds said. “And, as you know, sharing breakfast with the chairman, the former chairman of the Fed, the Federal Reserve, any time you’ve got two quarters in a row, you are in a recession. We want to see us get out of that recession.”
Mitchell did not allow the lie to stand.
“We’re not in a recession yet,” Mitchell responded. “But we’ll wait and see what does happen.”
Rounds showed his ineptitude to the new reality by restating that two-quarters of declining GDP is a recession. That is false. The GDP calculations have technicalities that one must consider. And Mitchell made him seem like a troglodyte.
“And that is out of date,” Andrea said with a hearty smile. “Even according to Republican economists.”
It is clear Andrea was alluding to her husband since Senator Rounds tried to use Alan Greenspan to infer some sort of credulity. Andrea dinged that.
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