Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel revisited The Kelly File tonight where he did even better than in his last appearance. He was pretty darned good last time but this time he went the extra mile (at least in my mind) by specifically calling out Fox’s bias and agenda.
Kelly was snippy right off the bat as she interrupted Emanuel and said shrilly, “Let’s have a question and answer. The interview works better that way.” Then she proceeded to pepper him with questions and interrupt his answers.
However, I’d have to say Emanuel gave as good as he got. For example, when he disputed Kelly’s claim that 5 million people have had their insurance canceled as a result of the Affordable Care Act, he said, “Only on Fox is it 5 million,” he told her.
At another point, after Kelly started shouting at him, Emanuel said, “Maybe if you would stop yelling at me?”
“Did you know or didn’t you?” Kelly demanded petulantly. She was referring to whether or not it had been foreseen that so many people would lose their health insurance coverage in the wake of ObamaCare.
“You don’t see that before ObamaCare those kind of cancellations happened all the time,” Emanuel replied. Then he took it the extra step by pointing out, “You never covered them. They were very common.”
When she interrupted again, he said, “You keep interrupting. Isn’t there any manners here?”
“Sir, it’s a back and forth,” Kelly snapped. “I’m not just going to give you the platform for a soliloquy.” That is, no platform so long as it’s a liberal doing the talking. Because when it came to her next guest, Tea Party Senator Ted Cruz, she let him talk as much as he wanted to without interruption. That video is the second video below, there for your comparison. There's a world of difference.
But here was my favorite part: Emanuel pointed out that when the exchanges were set up, it was “not an environment which was hospitable to setting (them) up.” As Kelly once again tried to interrupt, he added, “You and your colleagues were constantly criticizing, trying to underfund it and trying to make sure it didn’t work. …It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. ‘We’re gonna try to do everything we can to make it fail and then when it fails, we’re gonna say, ‘Oh, why did it fail?’”
Kelly protested, saying that Fox News had nothing to do with setting up the healthcare.gov website.
But Emanuel shot back, “You were constantly attacking the law and you were trying to make it underfunded.”
And you know Kelly knew he had a point because she let it go by sneering she’d “give” him that for argument’s sake.
And she concluded by saying, “You’re fun to talk to. Thanks for being here.”
Kelly said in an interview shortly before The Kelly File premiered that she was not going to be a female version of Bill O’Reilly. Maybe not, but she sure seems to be doing her best to try sometimes. She even announced, at about 2:55, “That’s spin!” However, I suspect that in real life she’s much less of a conservative firebrand. Her respect for Emanuel confirmed that in my mind. But is playing a conservative mouthpiece on TV, while pretending otherwise, better or worse actually being one?
I report, you decide.
Meanwhile, I think we can definitively classify Emanuel as our latest Top Dog.
This is the Insurance company or my company raising that, not Obama-care." We are not in the exchanges and this is minor considering that they went up 25%/2001, 19%/2003, 40%/2007, 9%/2010, and went down 19% in 2012.
If it goes up 10%, that means I’ve broken even during Pres. Obama’s tenure. Compare that to the Bush Administration which went up a total of 84%.
Do right-wingers have difficulty with math?
“Personally, I’m tired of Insurance companies stealing my money and giving me sh$*ty coverage in return. I’m grateful that Pres. Obama took the initiative to help us folks with this problem. Why exactly aren’t you grateful for this, Cecelia?”
Hmmmmmmmmmmm Sandman2, is it possible that, by chance, Cecelia Jernegan MIGHT be a CBS (Constantly B***hing Stockholder) in a major health insurer?
So rising rates is simply not a new thing. This year I saw, for the first time a decrease in rates. Not everyone has had the same experience of course. But time will tell us whether Obamacare has helped the situation. But I’ll credit Obama for doing something to try to stem the meteoric rise of health care costs— at least its better than the Republican plan which is doing nothing at all while people are suffering and dying needlessly while in the midst of the ’world’s best health care system.’
If Fox hosts allow Liberals to speak, without interruption, their audience might learn something that Fox has spent years trying to keep from them, namely the truth.
If Cecelia Jernegan could explain how my health insurance, through my employer, went down for the first time in my lifetime, I might be willing to take her point of view seriously. I believe it’s because the carrier was nervous about losing nearly 300 policies to the ACA exchanges. 19 years at same employer and 4 or 5 different Insurance carriers. They didn’t tell us beforehand that they were switching. Everytime, the coverage was less than previous plans. Then it went to 80%/20% and the cost STILL went up. How does that happen, Cecelia?
Personally, I’m tired of Insurance companies stealing my money and giving me sh$*ty coverage in return. I’m grateful that Pres. Obama took the initiative to help us folks with this problem. Why exactly aren’t you grateful for this, Cecelia?
Megyn Kelly did not need to shout at anyone. She was simply being rude to a guest on her show. And she was doing so because he knew what he was talking about and was easily disproving her opinions. Yelling a debunked talking point does not suddenly make it true again, but Kelly seemed oblivious to that idea.
As for what the ACA is or isn’t, it’s quite clear that the GOP and Fox News desperately WANTS it to fail. Just as they desperately wanted President Obama to fail, as Rush Limbaugh angrily announced before Obama was even inaugurated in 2009. But that doesn’t mean that it’s already failed. It just means that the GOP wishes it would.
It’s interesting that Cecelia mentions the “Washington DC bubble” needing to “get a clue”. I would agree at a certain level – Fox News certainly has misled many viewers as to what is happening in the country. Such as when Fox News and right wing media insisted that MItt Romney was going to win the 2012 election in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.
As for the “plan” from Ted Cruz, it’s clear that he doesn’t have one. He just wants to attack the ACA again. Now, will he try to get his friends to shut the government down again in January and February? During an election year? If he really thinks that’s a good idea, he should try it and see what happens to the GOP in 2014. Fox News likes to cite lower approval numbers for President Obama, but forgets to note that the GOP House has MUCH lower numbers in the same polls. Such as getting down to 9 percent. Which tells you that Americans may be upset with the way their government is dysfunctional these days, but they’re a lot clearer about where the problem is than Fox News is willing to admit. Fox News also doesn’t want to acknowledge that given the polarization of the country (which they’ve eagerly fomented), it’s unlikely you’ll see any President get much above a 50 percent approval rating other than for a few extreme moments, like the day after an election. Otherwise, you have a 50/50 split, and if some of the Dems are irritated at the moment, you’ll see the approval rating dip. Of course, the current spell is nothing like the cratering of George W. Bush’s approval rating as the economy tanked under his “leadership”. But Fox News didn’t want to discuss that when it happened in 2008. So why is the number important now? Is it because they just don’t like this particular President?
And what was the difference between the guests?
Emanuel was making good points, over and over, noting how the GOP and Fox News were dead set against the ACA from the beginning. Which is correct. The GOP tried multiple times to kill it in Congress before it could be passed. They spent hours and days and months on Fox News saying it couldn’t possibly pass and would never pass, and that even if it did somehow pass, it would be thrown out by the courts. Then when it passed, they did everything they could to gum up the works. The Dems say that it can be run by the states? Fine, the GOP state houses decided not to participate, thus overloading the federal exchanges. The Dems cave on the public option? Fine, the GOP seizes on the insurance companies dropping customers and accuses the Dems of somehow deliberately causing that problem. The law gets upheld in the court system? Fine, the GOP shuts down the government and cripples the ACA at the moment of its launch. And all to what end? So that the GOP can kill a GOP health plan just because a Democrat President they hate had the temerity to get it passed. Or to put it more simply: out of pure partisanship and hatred.
And what did Cruz have to offer by way of argument? Exactly what he was offering when he cheerled the government shutdown: He wants to go back to the plan of repealing the ACA one more time. And even today, months and years down the line, Cruz is still incapable of saying what he would replace the ACA with as an alternative. He only knows that he desperately wants to kill it – so that he can campaign on that “win” or at least get a cushy Fox News program of his own when he leaves Congress in a few years.