Expanding to two hours after the departure of carnival barker Jim Acosta and before being joined next month by Wolf Blitzer to co-host The Situation Room, CNN’s Pamela Brown has kept up the usual partisan chicanery and Tuesday was no exception with a lengthy, 11-minutes-plus battle with Congressman Tim Burchett (R-TN) that mostly consisted of Brown defending government workers and Burchett schooling her on CNN’s credibility.
Brown pivoted from the Russia-Ukraine war to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Elon Musk with her concern not about the need to shrink government, but process, claims of concern for the privacy of taxpayers, and Musk doing business in China.
Burchett wasn’t having any of this nonsense, observing “[i]t’s amazing to me, though, that — that all of a sudden capitalism and — and making money in this country is now declared evil” in the eyes of the left and are left with George Soros after Musk jumped ship.
He used the IRS as an example of an inefficient agency in need of change: “IRS is — is — is a nightmare, ma’am. You have — you have folks that haven’t — still haven’t gone back to work three or four years after Covid. As a United States congressman, I can write a letter of concern over a constituent of mine having a problem with the IRS and it takes up to six months for me to get a response.”
Unsurprisingly, Brown didn’t like his answers and interacted with the official liberal response (under the guise of Burchett not answering her questions).
Burchett kept pressing, noting “the IRS has hundreds of different groups that that have access to this stuff, and yet, no one’s complained about that.” Yet again, Brown interrupted. This time, she defended the agency as squeaky clean with “checks and balances” while Burchett said she and her liberal pals were choosing to “attack the messenger, not the message” of ending government bloat (click “expand”):
BROWN: There’s checks and balances in place —
BURCHETT: — but now they do —
BROWN: — for the specific system.
BURCHETT: — because the —
BROWN: That’s not true. Even the IRS —
BURCHETT: — ma’am, there are no checks and balances, but —
BROWN: — even —
BURCHETT: — no, ma’am —
BROWN: — the IRS, even politicals —
BURCHETT: — no, ma’am.
BROWN: — and the former IRS commissioner —
BURCHETT: The IRS is —
BROWN: — was just on the show yesterday, said even he didn’t go to it and it’s highly unusual for political to have access to that system. Do you not have questions about what they’re doing with the data, why they want access to private tax information from Americans? Do you not have those questions as a member of the Oversight Committee?
BURCHETT: I have questions. The only reason you’d have questions is — is if — is if you’re doing something crooked and you’re going to see a lot of congressmen with red faces when they follow this paper trail back to members of Congress, ma’am, and that’s — that’s the bottom line. That’s — and the only — where were they fussing the last three or four years? I mean, we’ve had these groups have — different groups have — have access — hundreds of different people have access to this that that are — are nowhere in the scope of what needs to be and yet, no one raised one peep about it. Now? Elon Musk gets a hold of it and he — and he’s going to do something. He’s going to make some changes that need to be made and — and — and you all are pitching a fit. It’s the same old line, ma’am. You attack the messenger, not the message.
Brown delivered a comical retort:
To be clear, we all are not pitching a fit. A lot — as you said, a lot of people think it’s a good thing to weed out waste, but there are fair questions to be asking, congressman, about these unelected people going in and having access to private information from Americans. How can you not be asking those questions? Those are very fair questions.
Burchett clapped back with the question none of these rich, liberal partisans in New York and Washington will ever accept: “How many — how many people at the IRS are elected? How many of those are elected, ma’am?”
Despite later asserting no one is against waste and recognizes the government spends too much, Brown predictably jumped to the defense of the leviathan. Burchett schooled her double standard. It only would have been better if he invoked the Parkland kids or Greta Thunberg as youth whom leftists insisted everyone should follow (click “expand”):
BROWN: There’s a difference between civil service and checks and balances in place in a small group and politicals who are going in, many of them young staffers who we know nothing about, really, and getting — and why —
BURCHETT: And — and you attack them because of their youth.
BROWN: — but why? But why don’t you have those questions —
BURCHETT: Listen —
BROWN: — as a member of the Oversight Committee, if a Democratic administration was doing this, would you not be asking questions?
BURCHETT: — and the questions are being asked, ma’am, but I want you to look at these domes behind me.
BROWN: I’m not hearing them from you and it’s —
BURCHETT: Those are Japanese — that — well, those Japanese, those are Japanese rifle [sic] that guess what? My dad was 20, 21 years old when he killed the people that carried that. You all don’t question the fact that, you know, we — we — these 20, 22 year old people, the ones that fight are dadgum wars, but yet —
BROWN: Okay, there’s a difference between —
BURCHETT: — when they do something else, you want to attack them.
BROWN: — members of the Greatest Generation going to foreign service —
BURCHETT: You’re wanting to attack their youth.
BROWN: — risking their life to serve our country, and young staffers going in with their computers —
BURCHETT: And these —
BROWN: and trying to get access to personal data. There is a — a big difference[.]
Brown continued her disingenuous, empty platitudes: “[I]t’s not a question of whether they should be rooted out of the government. So many people agree with that, but now we’re seeing — it’s the way it’s being done. The government is trying to claw back several employees who oversaw nuclear weapons after they were fired. They realized, oh, we made a mistake.”
“[Y]ou’re attacking the messenger here, not the results. You talk about nuclear secrets. You had a nuclear — a person who was in charge of nuclear secrets — a man who dressed up as a woman would go into the airport and steal women’s luggage — was overseeing those nuclear secrets under the Biden administration and I never heard you say a peep about that,” Burchett zinged, citing the strange case of Sam Brinton.
Showing the thickness of her bubble Brown claimed she didn’t “know anything about that” and thus “unrelated to the people overseeing nuclear weapons being fired.”
Burchett delivered the rhetorical knockouts about the federal workforce seemingly having expected to be able to live by different rules than other Americans and CNN’s ratings being “in the tank” an illustration of their aversion to discussing real government waste beyond platitudes (click “expand”):
BURCHETT: You have no-show employees that are — that are angry that they’re having to go back to work, that they’ve moved and they’re not even in the district —
BROWN: No one is disagreeing there’s bloat and waste and —
BURCHETT: — of where their regional jobs were.
BROWN: No one is disagreeing with that.
BURCHETT: Well, then why are y’all not exposing it? Have y’all have — y’all even talked about — hey, Mozambique. We sent them $10 million for circumcisions?
BROWN: Okay.
BURCHETT: I mean, goodness gracious, ma’am, Americans are paying over 50 percent —
BROWN: We have. We’ve been covering at length —
BURCHETT: — of their salaries —
BROWN: — where the money is going to.
BURCHETT: No, you haven’t. You all — all y’all do is run down Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and you continuously do this and that’s why your ratings are in the tank. Ma’am. You all need to jump on board with this thing. Americans are tired[.]
Brown wasn’t amused, immediately cutting Burchett off and ending the segment: “Congressman Tim Burchett we’re going to leave it there. I do appreciate your time coming on and having this conversation. Thank you very much.”
To see the relevant CNN transcript from February 18, click here.
