Your Sunday Rundown Starring Journalism Heroes Chris Wallace And Chuck Todd!
This timeline is weird.
Hello Wonks!! Happy New Year! Welcome to the Sunday Rundown where we are still dealing with 2018's shutdown because a weird haired motherfucker thinks it's ok to hurt EVERYONE to get his ridiculous pet project. So let's take a look at the idiots, liars, and dumbasses who came to the politics Sunday shows for that.
We begin with Mike Huckabee's worst child (and that's saying a lot ), Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
No longer "smokey eyed," but still burning facts!
Appearing on "Fox News Sunday" to try to spin the idiotic shutdown in friendly territory, Sanders encountered something she wasn't expecting on Fox News: A fact-checking, tired-of-her-bullshit Chris Wallace. What follows is almost 11 minutes of excruciating smackdown, on live tv, from Wallace every time Sanders attempts another lie. Like when asked why not open the government up AND THEN legislate/negotiate for policy (like it's supposed to be done):
WALLACE: […] And the question is, why not sign that bill, fund those agencies that have nothing to do with the border wall, and not hold those hundreds of thousands of federal workers, and the services they provide, hostage?
SANDERS: We're not holding anybody hostage. The president wants to fund the government; he wants to open the government --
WALLACE: But you could open those eight other agencies.
Sanders again tries to say that it's Democratic lawmakers not working in good faith or being "reasonable," but again Wallace is having NONE of it:
WALLACE: No, no, no. But do you -- but I'm not talking about Homeland Security. That -- you can continue to fight about that, if you want, and you shut it down -- but why hold agriculture hostage? Why hold justice hostage? Why hold the Treasury Department hostage? Why not fund them? They have nothing to do with a border wall.
SANDERS: The president wants to do this all at once. He knows it's better if they can focus on getting all of these packages done at one time.
WALLACE: Isn't the real reason, because you want the leverage from all the agencies?
SANDERS: It's not just -- it's not that. But you also have to look at the six bills. Those aren't the budget that we submitted, either. There are a lot of discrepancies between what we --
WALLACE: Those have all been approved by Republicans in the Senate.
Conversation then moved on to actual immigration. Wallace fact-checked Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen misleading statement about "special interest aliens" by explaining it:
WALLACE: Special Interest Aliens are just people who come from countries that have ever produced a terrorist. They're not terrorists themselves. And the State Department says that there is, quote, their words: 'no credible evidence of any terrorist coming across the border from Mexico.'
Let's move on to the non-Jared director of every agency in government (and acting chief of staff!), Mick Mulvaney.
Appearing on NBC's "Meet The Press," Mulvaney also tried to lie and spin about the shutdown. But it was the initial misleading statements about negotiations at the beginning that immediately catch your attention:
MULVANEY: The first line that the chief negotiator said was, "We're not here to agree to anything," which is a stunning way to start a negotiation. And then after --
TODD: Why is that stunning? I mean, none of their bosses were there and the president wasn't there, so nobody was empowered to make a deal. Isn't that normal?
MULVANEY: No, no, no, we were not -- let's make perfectly clear, we were not there to make a final deal. There is no question.
TODD: It was clear nobody was there to make a final deal?
MULVANEY: Correct. The specific mandate of the group was to try and find agreement on some of the underlying terms
See, this is the reason you have to interrupt Trump officials with on the spot fact checks. Because they will intentionally and deliberately misstate events/facts hoping that by the time it gets checked, their lies have already burrowed into the consciousness. Like Sanders, Mulvaney tries to mischaracterize the meeting to make it seem like Democrats are unreasonable when it was known from beginning that no one at the meeting had final authorization for any deal. Mulvaney knew this but tried to pass it by, and would have succeeded if Chuck Todd (CHUCK TODD!) had not fulfilled his bare minimum journalistic duties for calendar year 2019.
Chuck Todd, environment and resistance hero. It's a weird year.
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Slow down there, hoss. Move on to paying federal workers, maintaining our national parks, getting hungry folks their food stamps. And impeachment proceedings of course.
gee, it's almost like they went to this well one too many times. nobody could have seen this coming.