On the heels of President Obama and Senate Democrats achieving the minimum threshold on Wednesday to preserve the Iran nuclear deal, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC applauded during their evening newscasts the “unstoppable” “done deal” that had Secretary of State John Kerry taking “a victory lap.”
Even though the American people remain largely opposed to the deal (along with a majority of their representatives in Congress), ABC’s World News Tonight anchor David Muir still hailed it as “[a] big victory for President Obama” despite it coming “under fire, of course, from Republicans threatening to defeat it” (having failed to mention how two Democratic Senators oppose it).
Muir added that the deal “is safe thanks to Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, saying she will not support the deal, giving the President 34 votes – the magic number, enough to prevent the Senate from overriding President Obama.”
Shifting over to NBC Nightly News, anchor Lester Holt saluted “a major win for the Obama administration” for a deal that “now appears unstoppable” with the President having “locked down all the votes he needs for the controversial agreement to survive in the Republican-controlled Senate.”
NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent and MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell continued on that theme, touting how “Kerry took a victory lap today when Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski became the 34th senator supporting the Iran deal and that’s enough to prevent Congress from killing it.”
However, Mitchell was the lone network report to even mention polling data on public opinion of the deal, but quickly brushed it aside in claiming that they “show Americans are sharply divided over the agreement but Republican [presidential] candidates sure aren’t.”
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As for the CBS Evening News, it was held up by anchor Scott Pelley as a “critical decision” that’s made the nuclear agreement with the terrorist nation “a done deal” that will “lift economic sanctions that are crippling Iran in return for Iran giving up development of a nuclear bomb for 10 years.”
In a live shot with Pelley, congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes pointed out that “Republicans are almost universally opposed to this deal” and will still try and employ any maneuver or resolution possible to delay or stop it. With that in mind, she admitted that “this deal is far from being implemented.”
The networks cheerleading for the deal comes after the media spent much of Wednesday welcoming the move by the liberal Mikulski even though it faces strong opposition in the American public and from the very people they elected to Congress.
In terms of Spanish-language networks, the contrast was stark as both Telemundo and Univision did not mention Mikulski’s announcement while Aztecae’s Hechos Nacional Tarde did.
