It must have really irked Wisconsin Public Radio to report that Sen. Ron Johnson has been declared the winner of his race, giving him his third term in the upper body. However, rather than simply reporting on the Johnson victory, WPR made sure to let their partisan bias reveal itself in some bitter sliming of Johnson.
Reporters Rich Kremer and Danielle Kaeding wrote:
Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson has won reelection to a third term, narrowly defeating Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes.
...At the beginning of the election cycle, Johnson was seen as one of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents in the U.S. Senate. He pulled ahead of Barnes in recent polling after a September onslaught of negative ads that painted Barnes as a soft-on-crime, radical liberal.
The local reporters didn't just resent the GOP (accurately) painting Barnes as a radical who trashed the police, they painted him as anti-science on COVID:
Johnson has long been known as a polarizing and controversial figure in politics who made headlines for pushing drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as early treatment options during the COVID-19 pandemic. He's also been a leading skeptic of COVID-19 vaccines making false or misleading claims about the shots.
If you think that was all that WPR had in its smear arsenal you would be wrong:
The senator has been tied to the fake elector scheme, which is being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice, after text messages came to light showing Johnson's office tried to get slates of fake electoral ballots from Wisconsin and Michigan to former Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6, 2021. Since then, Johnson has hired one of Wisconsin's 10 fake electors to work for his reelection campaign, and he's spent more than $20,000 for legal consultation with a Wisconsin law firm that assisted former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the state's 2020 election results.
Johnson has downplayed the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that day on Jan. 6, where Trump supporters assaulted Capitol police officers as they tried to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden's 2020 victory. Johnson has compared the rioters to tourists and during a presentation to Milwaukee Rotary Club in early October, Johnson said calling the attack an armed insurrection is inaccurate.
The middle name of WPR is "Public" but apparently, they consider the public in Wisconsin who voted to re-elect Johnson to be beneath contempt.
