ABC and NBC both came out of live coverage of President Biden's "moment of history" signing a massive "COVID relief" package by touting Biden's "major victory...without one Republican vote" and how polls show he, and not the Republicans have the polling on their side. (Some of that might just be the very tilted and promotional media coverage the public is getting!)
ABC's David Muir and Mary Bruce laud Biden making "history" with massive COVID spending bill without a single Republican vote. pic.twitter.com/MjF0qbhsi6
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) March 11, 2021
DAVID MUIR: I want to bring in our senior White House correspondent Mary Bruce watching this with me, this moment of history. The largest relief package since the Great Depression here in this country. This was a major victory for the president. He did this without one Republican vote either in the House or the Senate, Mary. But he also did it knowing the polling on this, right up until the moment he signed this today, has been on his side.
MARY BRUCE: And David, that is why it was one of the first things, actually the first thing the president just mentioned in his remarks there, while not a single Republican, not one was willing to join him on Capitol Hill in passing this bill, the White House was willing to take that risk because they feel that the American people are behind this bill. We know from the latest polling, 41 percent of Republicans, according to one poll out this week, do support this bill.
And it is a risk for the president, though, doing this just with Democratic support. Joe Biden came to Washington confident that he could work across the aisle, that he could convince Republicans to back some of these big-ticket agenda items of his. But Republicans simply insisted that this bill was just too expensive. Republican leaders called it a partisan spending spree. But the president over and over again said the risk here was not in going too big but in going too small. He was never willing to compromise, to come down from this nearly $2 trillion price tag on this.
Muir concluded by repeating that 41 percent of Republicans and 94 percent of Democrats backed this bill.
Over on NBC, Andrea Mitchell tried to channel Biden's message.
NBC's Andrea Mitchell cheers Biden's $1.9 trillion package as a true victory for working people and one that will truly boost the economy, unlike the "partisan" tax cuts from President Trump and a Republican Congress that, according to her, only benefitted the rich. pic.twitter.com/iHgjKDgqpi
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 11, 2021
MITCHELL: It shows that he feels there is such strong support, more than 70 percent support, for what is this package around the country, and from Republican mayors, and even some governors, other local officials, that he thinks it really is bipartisan. That’s what they’re pointing to.
And also, when he talks about rebuilding the backbone of America, Lester? That’s really core to Joe Biden’s belief about this. The president really believes that he needs to target this to working- and middle-class people. It is so different from the tax bill that was also completely partisan, the first measure that Donald Trump passed when he became president....that helped higher-earning people. He believes that the future of the economy is to rebuild it from the bottom up.
