The radical wing of Fox News conservatives are using the government shutdown as a launching pad to suggest that much of the federal government should be destroyed. A Fox News Democrat didn’t seem to notice.
Friday night, a Hannity show discussion centered around the imminent government shutdown over Donald Trump’s unpopular demand that U.S. taxpayers fund the border wall (that he promised Mexico would pay for) or else. The two conservative guests, plus substitute host Gregg Jarrett, all cheered Trump’s temper tantrum. Guest Danielle McLaughlin, introduced as an attorney, supposedly a Democrat, was so milquetoasty that she effectively enabled the radicalism.
McLaughlin had no apparent problem with this gaslighting propaganda from guest Tammy Bruce.
BRUCE: This is a president who actually can’t be controlled in that he can’t be stopped from getting things done, and this is I think his primary threat. What we do know, of course, is, is that what we’ve seen in the last two years is the Democrats became a party of bullies, chasing around the GOP women, harassing people in public.
[…]
The president—this is I think in some ways what the founders wanted, a man of action or person of action in the White House to move Congress into getting things done.
If Trump is so effective, why hasn’t he gotten the wall built already – and gotten Mexico to pay for it? Republicans have controlled both chambers of Congress since he took office nearly two years ago. Also, if Bruce wants to talk about bullies, it’s hard to imagine a bigger bully than Trump. And, by the way, why would any self-respecting Democrat let someone attack the party the way Bruce did without objection?
Worse than all that was Bruce’s pretense that Trump is “what the founders wanted.” Fact check: There is a lot of evidence he has committed campaign finance felonies, colluded with a foreign adversary and violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution, engaged in tax fraud and, oh yeah, he just shut down his charitable foundation amid accusations, by New York’s attorney general, of illegality and self-dealing. You’d think that a lawyer would have a problem with Bruce's claim. But no.
So Bruce began dissembling about the wall.
BRUCE: And at this point, I think the Congress should remember what their job is, why the president was elected in that Harvard-Harris poll saying 80 percent of Americans want a secure border and, of course, a barrier is going to have to be a part of it.
Bruce may think a barrier “is going to have to be a part” of border security but the voters do not. A recent Quinnipiac poll found that a majority of Americans oppose the wall, do not think it’s necessary and do not want the government shut down over it. The Harvard-Harris poll similarly found that Americans do not want the government shut down over the wall.
McLaughlin let that go by, too.
Next, the wingers began suggesting that a government shutdown is no biggie, if not a good thing altogether.
Jarrett suggested he thought “non-essential” government employees, i.e. those who don’t work during a shutdown, are not needed at all.
“Why does the government employ non-essential workers?” Jarrett asked. Surely, he is smart enough to know why. But McLaughlin meekly responded, “Well, one example is the Department of Justice, you keep the criminal folks on and you take the civil people off. But I would still argue that enforcing civil laws and making sure that penalties are paid is still an important function of government.”
Bruce suggested the shutdown is just an extra holiday for government employees:
BRUCE: What strikes me is this obsession by the government about itself. That is the scariest thing for them that people will have a few days off during the holiday, they will still get paid a few days late, it’s not like they won’t get paid, because Americans know what it’s like to be furloughed for years and to never get a paycheck because of what Washington, D.C. has done with policies, what the Obama administration did to the economy of this country.
The third guest, extremist Allen West, joined the chorus.
WEST: You brought up an incredible point. Why does the federal government hire people that it has in non-essential positions? So, this—and of course, when this quote- unquote shutdown is over, they will be given the back pay.
So, this is a very important thing to look at the effectiveness and the efficiency of the federal government. I think another thing that is very disingenuous is that you’re - here you have people talking about Medicare-for-all, which has a $32 trillion price tag, but yet in a four $4.4 trillion dollar budget, we can’t find $5.7 billion to ensure that we have security along our southern border.
Here, McLaughlin should have slammed West for comparing Medicare-for-all – a hugely popular proposal that would provide health care for all Americans - to an unpopular boondoggle that we were promised Mexico would pay for. Instead, she said mildly, “I mean, you’re not suggesting that the civil division of the Department of Justice is non-essential.”
Jarrett replied, “I’m not a fan of the Department of Justice, so I would disassemble the Department of Justice.”
Wait, what? He wants to demolish the DOJ?
Again, McLaughlin gave the weakest of weak-tea responses:
MCLAUGHLIN: I think that there are many important things that the DOJ does from a civil perspective, not least of which is consumer protection, making sure that student loans, people don’t get ripped off. There’s all sorts of things that we have lawyers and other people doing really important things for the American [people].
Watch McLaughlin's pathetic response to right-wing radicalism below, from the December 21, 2018 Hannity.
(Transcript excerpts via Fox News)
Anti-government hyperventilating by the far-right has accelerated in the reign of Trump. Just look at all the crackpot ‘deep state’ hysteria. Which translates into if it isn’t ideologically right-wing it needs to be purged.
Jarrett has hopped out of the far-right closet to expose himself as a right-wing nutjob from Hades.
Trump sycophants whining Democrats are “bullies”? Our founding fathers wanted a corrupt, narcissistic autocrat with the IQ of a brick in the White House? Seriously? This transcript reads like a SNL skit. 🤣
Rather than jail time, I would like to see these idiots condemned to something more punishing … like having to view their own shows over and over again. Strap them into a chair, use toothpicks to keep their eyes open and put the sound on good and loud. Then give them a chance to shorten their punishment by writing summaries of what they saw and heard. Write a month off their sentence for every paper that provides an accurate account.