Welcome to What the Media Missed, the place we dig into the numerous examples of legacy media malpractice that disgraced the nation’s entrance pages this week—whereas highlighting how Every day Kos goes previous the spin to uncover the actual horror tales of our new Trump period.
Medicaid in peril
Ask Donald Trump his place on Medicaid and he’ll swear up and down that Republicans received’t lay a finger on this system, which covers over 66 million Individuals. Legacy media retailers have largely given Trump the advantage of the doubt—an odd selection given the president’s tendency to simply make shit up.
Regardless of his pledge to “love and cherish” Medicaid dominating the headlines, Trump this week backed a Home GOP spending plan that will enact sweeping cuts to the medical insurance program. Every day Kos dug into what these cuts imply for aged and low-income Individuals, together with profit cuts so excessive that many states may have no selection however to pressure presently insured seniors out of this system. In the meantime, the highest 1% of American earners would reap the advantages, within the type of a tax minimize.
Trump should be respiratory a sigh of reduction over all of the smooth headlines he and Speaker Mike Johnson are getting, as a result of a new Related Press-NORC ballot discovered that chopping Medicaid stays one of the unpopular concepts in America. Roughly 70% of respondents mentioned the federal government ought to both protect or develop Social Safety, Medicare, and Medicaid, whereas majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents all mentioned defending these applications needs to be a precedence. Johnson and Home Republicans cross these voters at their very own peril.
Trump’s embrace of hardline Medicaid cuts might make issues tougher for him within the Senate, after Trump ally and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley brazenly broke with the president to sentence the thought of gutting this system.
Capitol Hill is headed for an additional entitlement disaster. It couldn’t occur to extra deserving scumbags.
Ukraine fumble
Talking of squishy headlines, the continued institutional give up of the American media continued this week with a flood of headlines meant to place a normalizing spin on Trump’s most legally outrageous actions. That was very true of Trump’s beautiful choice to align the US with Russia in its ongoing warfare in Ukraine, a baffling and sudden strategic realignment with out parallel in American historical past.
Even worldwide media retailers bought in on the minimization. The BBC described Trump as “very frustrated” that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declined a deal that will award half of his nation’s lithium and titanium to American firms. In actual fact, this was no “deal”—it was an try by Trump to make use of Ukraine’s warfare weariness to rob the nation blind.
What did Republican leaders should say about Trump’s outrageous and probably legal quid professional quo provide? Who is aware of! Retailers like The New York Occasions handled the silence of GOP lawmakers as normal working process as an alternative of a shameful dereliction of obligation.
Because it seems, it wasn’t that arduous to seek out Republicans who had been pissed off and even livid at Trump’s choice to betray one of many GOP’s core overseas coverage ideas. Every day Kos discovered examples from lawmakers together with Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska ,and Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, amongst loads of others. The criticism was there the complete time—the legacy media simply didn’t trouble looking for it.
The sanewashing of Steve Bannon
Legacy media’s love of battle was on full show this week when crackpot anti-government podcaster Steve Bannon blasted Elon Musk as a “parasitic illegal immigrant” attempting to “play-act as God.” The Occasions eagerly took Bannon’s bait, framing the feud as a battle between the chaotic Musk and the principled, cost-cutting conservative Bannon.
Again in actuality, Every day Kos noticed the Bannon-Musk feud for what it actually was, noting that “Steve Bannon totally isn’t jealous of Elon Musk.” The piece supplied some psychoanalysis that the legacy media missed—together with the rising realization amongst stalwart MAGA loyalists like Bannon that tech billionaires like Musk have displaced a lot of Trump’s earliest acolytes.
It doesn’t assist issues that Bannon, a repeat federal felon who pleaded responsible final week to yet one more fraud case, is now too politically poisonous even for Trump. Bannon’s indignation over Musk’s misbehavior isn’t a matter of precept—it’s the pissed off rage of a person who’s realized too late that he’s been pushed to the facet.
That should come as an particularly bitter tablet for Bannon, who performed a lead position in connecting Trump’s MAGA motion with the tech billionaires who at the moment are poised to take it over.
In the long run, Bannon was iced out of energy for breaking his personal cardinal rule: By no means search for honor amongst thieves.
Headline Watch with Oliver Willis
Oh (no), Canada …
