A group of Democrats gathered in Puerto Rico over the weekend to meet with lobbyists and attend a showing of the Broadway production Hamilton. However, by watching TV on Sunday, most Americans probably would have no idea. Of the five Sunday talk shows, only Face The Nation bothered to cover the Democrats’ convocation in Puerto Rico; which took place in the midst of a partial government shutdown.
Host Margaret Brennan probably would not have brought it up at all if not for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who appeared as a guest on her show. When pressed by Brennan on when Federal government workers furloughed during the shutdown will get paid, McCarthy responded: “That’s why I’m here right now. I’m not in Puerto Rico. I’m here because I want to solve this problem.” The topic came up briefly during the panel discussion, where Brennan asked panelist Seung Min Kim to clarify McCarthy’s Puerto Rico reference.
Kim pointed out that “there is a contingent of Congressional Democrats who are on an event in Puerto Rico right now for a Super PAC.” She also admitted that “the optics are not great” but Brennan later made sure to highlight that Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who spent Christmas Vacation in Hawaii while President Trump remained at the White House waiting for a deal to reopen the government, did not attend the Puerto Rico bash.
Fox News covered the Democrats’ Puerto Rico event extensively on Sunday, including by showing an unflattering picture of a shirtless Senator Bob Menendez chatting with a bikini-clad waitress that definitely sums up the optics problem that Kim was talking about. A Washington Examiner headline also sums up the optics problems nicely: “30 Democrats with 109 lobbyists for weekend despite shutdown.” No wonder the rest of the media didn’t want to cover it.
Instead of talking about Puerto Rico, the Sunday show hosts preferred to focus on their favorite topic: Russia. During Sunday’s edition of The Next Revolution With Steve Hilton, the eponymous host played a montage of Sunday show hosts asking guests if they thought President Trump was a Russian agent, in light of a new New York Times report. State of the Union host Jake Tapper asked Virginia Senator Mark Warner “do you think President Trump is wittingly or unwittingly an agent of Russia?”
George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC’s This Week, asked “do you believe it’s possible that President Trump has been compromised by Russia?” CNN’s New Day Sunday co-host Victor Blackwell asked his guests, “do you believe that the President is a Russian asset?”
Following the conclusion of the montage, guest Ed Henry remarked that “some of them are like salivating dogs,” adding “they’re looking for meat every time and any time there is some development in the Mueller case, in the Russia case at large, we got him now, we got him and you can see the saliva coming out of the lips, literally.” Apparently, the media did not find any “meat” when it came to the Democrats’ ill-timed Puerto Rico retreat.
A transcript of the relevant portion of Sunday’s edition of Face The Nation is below. Click “expand” to read more.
Face The Nation
01/13/19
10:46 AM
MARGARET BRENNAN: The Federal government workers are the people paying the price right now and you…
REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY: They are.
BRENNAN: …have about 10,000 of them in your district.
MCCARTHY: And that is…
BRENNAN: What do you tell them? When are they going to get paid?
MCCARTHY: That is unacceptable. That’s why I’m here right now. I’m not in Puerto Rico. I’m here because I want to solve this problem.
(…)
11:08:43 AM
MARGARET BRENNAN: I also want to ask you, Seung Min, to clarify something. Leader McCarthy mentioned “I’m not in Puerto Rico, I’m here in Washington.” What was the point he was trying to make there?
(CROSSTALK)
SEUNG MIN KIM: There is a…so there is a contingent of Congressional Democrats who are on an event in Puerto Rico right now for a Super PAC. The optics aren’t great, I will say.
BRENNAN: During the shutdown.
KIM: During the shutdown. There is obviously because a lot of the shutdown is a messaging war and optics war. And you, Leader McCarthy, Kevin McCarthy made a point of saying, look I am here in DC, I am ready to work. You pointed out that he’s usually in California when, when you speak to him and there’s some unhappiness among Democratic quarters that that trip happened this week.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I am old enough people to remember when people thought that Puerto Rico was a natural Republican stronghold, by the way, but it doesn’t seem like the party believes that anymore.
BRENNAN: No. We did, when we looked at the group, the delegation that did go to Puerto Rico, it looks like Speaker Pelosi decided not to go, though she had been originally expected to be there. So, it is an optics war, it’s a rhetoric war and unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like there is much traction to getting anything done. But I want to take a quick break, come back because there is a lot more we need to sort through here. So, we are going to take a short break. Stay with us, more from our panel.
A transcript of the relevant portion of Sunday’s edition of The Next Revolution With Steve Hilton is below. Click “expand” to read more.
The Next Revolution With Steve Hilton
01/13/19
09:01 PM
STEVE HILTON: Look how the establishment media salivated today over the revelation that the FBI thought President Trump could be a Russian agent.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
JAKE TAPPER: Do you think President Trump is wittingly or unwittingly an agent of the Russians?
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you believe it’s possible that President Trump has been compromised by Russia?
VICTOR BLACKWELL: Do you believe that the President is a Russian asset?
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
HILTON: You know what this was based on? They were suspicious because Donald Trump was nice to President Putin. What, so the FBI are foreign policy pundits now? It’s obvious why the President is nice to Putin. He wants to have a good working relationship with him, you absolute idiots. That doesn’t mean he’s soft on policy like, oh, a certain President Obama, who gave Putin the green light to invade Crimea and Ukraine and his green energy policies boosted Russia’s economy. President Trump keeps going on about his great relationship with his friend, Xi Jinping. Does that make him a Chinese agent too? Trump has been tougher on China than any President for fifty years but he is still nice to Xi. He’s got a tougher Russia policy than any President since Reagan. But because he wants to combine that with a good personal relationship with Putin, the idiots in the FBI think he is a Russian agent. Look, the left are calling for the abolition of ICE because they think it’s a rogue agency behaving in an un-American way. Whatever you think of ICE, it’s clear that that description now applies to the FBI. It’s too early to say that the FBI is unreformable and should therefore be replaced, but its actions over the last few years have shown that it is institutionally biased in favor of the elitist establishment and needs a total clear out if it’s ever going to win back the confidence of all Americans. I would love to know what you think of that, @stevehiltonx and @NextRevFNC. Let’s find out what our guests tonight think. Fox News Anchor and Chief National Correspondent Ed Henry, he’s not in Washington, he’s here, Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren and founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk. Ed, what do you make of all of this? It’s…it’s, as many have noted, it’s so crazy, this story and yet the way that Trump’s critics are playing it out, it just, it feels to them as if this is the natural state of things.
ED HENRY: Some of them are like salivating dogs.
HILTON: Yes.
HENRY: They’re looking for meat every time and any time there is some development in the Mueller case, in the Russia case at large, we got him now, we got him and you can see the saliva coming out of the lips, literally.
