Monday on “Morning Joe,” while NBC’s Chuck Todd did refuse to accept Healthcare Bob Ezekiel Emanuel’s ludicrous excuse-making for President Obama’s Big Lie about being able to keep your health insurance, Todd did admit he never really believed the promise: “This is why I never understood why he said it … When he said it, I immediately kept thinking, ‘Well, how is that going to work?'”
That is all well and good, but where was this skepticism when it mattered?
I don’t want to single out Todd, because I know he wasn’t the only reporter wondering the same thing. But if at the time, you see the president launching a massive campaign of reassurance to get a bill passed and win re-election — a campaign that involves a promise that you as a reporter don’t believe he can keep — where was the reporting? Where was the media narrative demanding the president explain something a reporter as powerful as Todd “never understood?”
It is not like the evidence wasn’t out there. Over two years ago, a number of serious conservative think tanks and legitimate fact-checkers backed up Todd’s suspicions. But the reaction to this evidence from the media, when Mitt Romney or anyone on the political right brought it up, was either wrist-flicking or direct pushback from the media in the form of phony fact checks.
And let’s not forget that in September of 2010, the GOP attempted to pass a law that would have held ObamaCare to that promise, but it was shot down by Democrats.
Shouldn’t that have raised a few red flags?
Over the years, we have seen the media fact-check conservatives to death on every little nuance, campaign ad, and utterance. But when a sitting president, running a campaign to push a mammoth government program or to win his own reelection, is making a flat-out promise he has no intention of keeping, suddenly the media stick their collective heads in the sand and keep their suspicions to themselves.
We saw the same with the IRS scandal. More than a year prior to the scandal breaking wide open, Tea Party groups complained of IRS harassment. The media’s reaction, though, was to either ignore the victims or argue they got it coming.
There is just no question that the media is silent on these issues (until it is too late) because they do not want to hurt Obama or, more importantly, his agenda. During the push to pass ObamaCare, and to get Obama reelected, had Todd or anyone in the media’s Gang of 500 aired their suspicions and/or demanded the White House back the promise up, the world might look a whole lot different today.
But I guess the media was too busy for that. After all, Romney’s wife owned a horse. And then there was Todd Akin and “what about your gaffes” and the single jerk-off at the Tea Party rally holding a sign that said “socialist.”
And the media’s ObamaCare dishonesty through omission is already repeating itself. The same media seeking to reassure America that Obama’s Big Lie will only affect the 5% in the individual insurance market, know that holders of employer-based insurance are about to get hit with the same nuke.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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