CNN's Ali Velshi: Obama's #1 Sequester Propagandist?

Ali Velshi is CNN’s Chief Business Correspondent and Barack Obama’s Chief Sequester Propagandist. This so-called correspondent is a living breathing pipe-organ for the White House and its latest push to blame sequester — and by extension, the GOP — for Obama’s failed economic policies.

A little after 2pm ET today, Velshi appeared on CNN with Brooke Baldwin. She asked how the business community is reacting to sequester. His response was to use both hands to grab hold of Obama’s talking points from earlier today and spread that sequester gospel like one of the president’s apostles:

Generally speaking the word from the business community is pretty standard. We are at a time in our economy where it would be useful to be building and expanding. We got unemployment edging down, jobs being created, very low interest rates, and an energy boom. We could be really moving to the top of the global pile in terms of economic activity, and this sort of thing [sequester] is like the government sticking its foot out just as your gaining speed as you’re running.

Where to begin?

This isn’t a little partisan spin coming from Velshi, it is full-blown Orwellian propagandizing. You expect this kind of flackery from David Axelrod, not someone CNN poses as an objective correspondent.

1. Unemployment is not edging down. It is edging up. At best it’s stuck, and the CBO says it is going to stay stuck for at least another year.

2. Job creation is barely treading water with population growth.

3. An energy boom? Has Velshi filled his gas or home heating tank lately?

4. How exactly is our economy “gaining speed” when our economy plummeted around three-points last quarter to a growth level of one-tenth of one-percent?

5. “We could be really moving to the top of the global pile?” Did Velshi really say that? Good grief. Even Obama is more careful with the happy talk.

Then there are the lies of omission: The fact that we learned just today that the drop in income last month was the biggest in 20 years; and the fact that sequester represents about 2% of the federal budget, which translates to about a measly 1% of our GDP.

The picture Velshi is outrageously and dishonestly trying to paint is that our economy is humming (when the EXACT opposite is true) and that, if it falters (to a point where even the media can’t happy talk it), the fault falls on the government being too small, which Obama tried so desperately to stop.

But Velshi wasn’t done sucking up to Obama. Oh, no, someone’s looking for a “good dog” by blaming sequester in part on the right-leaning Chamber of Commerce:

But I have to tell you, the business community to some degree has fed this. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce really contributed to the partisanship and the election of people who are on both sides of this in Washington. And this is the result.

In Velshi’s defense… he has earned that “good dog.”

Come on CNN, can’t you do a little better than this? The economy just might become the biggest story in the country soon. If you want to earn back an audience, you’re going to need a business correspondent with some credibility, respect for context, and more respect for the viewer than his failed agenda.

 

Follow  John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC