As Republicans get set to vote on a bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare, expect the liberal media to continue their efforts to derail any plan with distortions, lies and dire predictions that the bill will hurt and even kill many Americans.
In the run-up to the vote, MSNBC political analyst Joan Walsh called House Speaker Paul Ryan a “monster” and charged that “the cruelty of this bill is beyond belief.” CBS This Morning co-host Charlie Rose wondered how Republicans could “justify the fact” that Obamacare repeal “will hurt the people that supported them most enthusiastically during the election?” Former Time magazine editor Rick Stengel equated the bill to tossing poor Americans off a boat: “It’s about throwing some people off and giving some people privileges.”
Talk show hosts got into the act as well, with HBO’s Bill Maher calling the GOP bill a “turd” that read “like a manifesto from the Zodiac killer,” while former daytime talker Montel Williams attacked it as a “ridiculously stupid piece of legislation” that sentences millions of Americans “to death.”
The following are just a few of the most obnoxious attacks, from the last few weeks, on the GOP’s efforts to repeal and replace ObamaCare:
“Monster” Paul Ryan’s “Cruelty” is “Beyond Belief”
“Paul Ryan has been dreaming about cutting this program [Medicaid] since he was sitting – hanging out at keggers in college – he’s told that story. What kind of a monster is he? Who dreams of cutting Medicaid? They act like people are merely takers – they don’t act like they understand hardship of any kind. Paul Ryan – who actually got Social Security as a survivor when his father died, God bless him. I mean, the cruelty....it’s the only word we can use – the cruelty of this bill is beyond belief.”
— MSNBC political analyst Joan Walsh on MSNBC’s The Last Word, June 23.
“If I were him [Paul Ryan’s Wisconsin Democratic challenger], I would tie this health bill...I would tie it to Paul Ryan. I would bring up the fact that he joked that – joked, supposedly joked – that he was dreaming of slashing Medicaid over keggers in college. I would just bring out what a heartless, soulless Washington creature he’s become. I don’t think the district knows. You’ve made some good points about ‘it’s nice to have somebody in leadership,’ but if you have somebody in leadership who’s devoted their life to hurting people in the district, let’s think twice about that.”
— MSNBC political analyst Joan Walsh on MSNBC’s AM Joy, June 25.
GOP’s “Mean” Bill Sentencing Millions to “Death”
“I’m so angry about this ridiculously stupid piece of legislation that is honestly nothing more than a tax cut and a political agenda disguised as a health care bill...There are over 125 million of the 312 million Americans who right now suffer from a chronic illness. Out of that 125 million, 70 percent of them suffer from two....This 125 million people as of today will be as high as 140 million by 2020. And in 2020, they are going to be looking for somebody to give them medication and health care. And what this bill does is sends them all to death.”
— Talk show host Montel Williams on CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin, June 23.
“Republicans look at it [health care] as a privilege, as a concierge service, as an entitlement that needs to be starved. And that’s what this bill represents. That’s what he [Barack Obama] means about it being ‘mean’ because it isn’t about getting everybody on board the boat where we all benefit – it’s about throwing some people off and giving some people privileges.”
— Former Time magazine editor Rick Stengel on MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, June 22.
GOP Bill Like Manifesto From a Serial Killer
“The, you know, real bad idea and real bad dude this week is the Senate unveiled their super-secret health care bill....Everybody’s saying it was unveiled. Unveiled? Unveiled is not the right term. You unveil a sculpture. Nobody goes, ‘Behold, a turd.’ This is more likely something that was excreted. I mean, health care bill? More like a manifesto from the Zodiac killer. They should have published this by cutting out letters from the newspaper. It phases out Medicaid – the safety net for our oldest, poorest, and most vulnerable citizens....A small group of Republican Senators say they can’t vote for it because it’s not mean enough. A group led by, not surprisingly, Ted Cruz – who has been studying health care from top to bottom, up and down. Ted says, ‘Who knows more about making people sick than I do?’”
— Host Bill Maher on HBO’s Real Time, June 23.
Drastic Cuts Could Lead to the Deaths of Innocents
Anchor Anthony Mason: “CBS News has learned Senate Republicans hoping to win support for the ObamaCare replacement have added another $45 billion for the treatment of opioid addiction. However, that’s just a fraction of what Medicaid covers right now, so what happens if Medicaid is cut drastically? Adriana Diaz takes a look.”...
Correspondent Adrian Diaz: “The opioid epidemic claimed 4,100 lives in Ohio last year, 308 here in Akron. What would you say to the folks in Washington who are talking about cutting back on Medicaid?”
Addict Leah Kohen: “Please, don’t do it. You’re going to have the blood of a lot of innocent people on your hands.”
— CBS Evening News, June 29.
“Brutal” Imagery of Republicans Having Leftist Activists Arrested
“On Capitol Hill, police are currently removing protesters in wheelchairs outside of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office. The protesters are from a nonprofit group called ADAPT. And it’s pretty extraordinary, these pictures. We’ve had people being carried out by Capitol Police, clearly they are under orders to clear the hallways. It’s not their fault, but this is what they are being told by House leadership and Senate leadership to do....A brutal image for Republicans and supporters of this bill, frankly....The power of these kinds of images is not to be discounted in this kind of debate....That’s the kind of image that, in my experience in the past, has led to Congress backing down from things, including catastrophic health care and other legislation that had already passed, was repealed, when people, when activists get out there on the streets and show real pain.”
— Host Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, June 22.
Trump Breaking His Promise, Will Hurt Americans...
“Let’s really talk about what it means to my [Republican] party, that my party has gotten to this stage where you just see the numbers and they are just devastating. There’s no attempt to hide the fact that Donald Trump is breaking every promise he made and that they will have a disproportionate impact hurting older, middle-income Americans.”
— Co-host Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, June 27.
“Obamacare is starting to become a birth right like Medicaid and Medicare. And what people – some people didn’t like was the ‘Obama’ on Obamacare, but they like the care. And we’re not going to be able to leave 20 or 22 million people without health care. You will have an eruption not just on YouTube but all over the country. And suddenly Donald Trump’s going to be responsible for people that are sick and ill. He had promised not to touch Medicaid and Medicare on the campaign trail – he reneged on that promise.”
— CNN historian Douglas Brinkley on CNN Tonight, June 28.
...Including His Own Voters
“You can lie if you’re Donald Trump, you can lie about whatever you want to lie about. If you’re Republicans, and you feel like lying about saying nobody’s going to lose their health care coverage, you can do that, too. But you slash $750 billion, Mike Barnicle, from Medicaid, after you’ve already slashed another $300 or $400 billion in an underlying budget, over $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts, that destroys health care in rural America, in Trump America. We’ve said it again, let me say it again, not just for the poor. For the middle class and the upper middle class, their parents in nursing home, their children in NICU units, you name it, it devastates health care for half of America.”
— Host Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe, June 28.
“How do [Republicans] justify the fact that it [ObamaCare repeal] will hurt the people that supported them most enthusiastically during the election?”
— Co-host Charlie Rose on CBS This Morning, June 27.
Trump is Distracting Us with Tweets While Republicans Ravage the Poor
“The truth is, every minute we are talking about these tweets, we are not talking about millions of people [that] are going to lose their health insurance and a tax cut for wealthy people. You know, we’re going to talk about later in the program, but, you know, was it calculated to distract attention?”
— Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin on CNN’s AC360, June 22.
Senate GOP Behaving Like Children Who “Did Something Wrong”
Anchor David Muir: “One quick question, Matt, on health care today. Millions of Americans finally learn what’s in the Republican senators’ plan. Why the secrecy?”
Political Analyst Matthew Dowd: “Well, you obviously have the secrecy because they think they’re doing something that the American public doesn’t want. It’s as if you walk in your living room and your kids are trying to hide something under the cushion. You know they did something wrong. And I think that’s a real problem.”
— ABC’s Good Morning America, June 22.
