Yesterday, the Your World show joined the Fox News weaponization of the Bernie Sanders town hall by suggesting that Sanders has committed political suicide by promoting universal Medicare.
As Media Matters noted, Fox hosts and guests wasted no time misrepresenting and smearing presidential candidate Sanders’ policy proposals. Your World did its part by painting them as political losers.
Host Neil Cavuto opened Tuesday’s show with a discussion of Sanders’ plan to raise taxes to pay for universal Medicare – and comparing him to presidential candidate Walter Mondale who lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan.
Guest Alexandra Wilkes, of the right-wing America Rising group, hit Sanders by suggesting a prohibitive cost will be borne by middle class families: "It's going to be about $20,000 more [in taxes] a family if you want to pay for Medicare for All, if you want to pay for free college tuition, there’s going to be a lot of pain felt by middle class families," she said.
Wilkes blamed Democrats “and some of the media” for the fact that "most people felt like they didn't get a tax cut.” Instead of anyone noting that the Trump tax cuts overwhelmingly favored the wealthy, Wilkes claimed the message is, “people already feel squeezed enough."
Scott Levenson was the lone Democrat among the four people in the discussion. "When the United States was entering its boom years in '49 throughout the '50s up til 1963, we didn't have a 70% tax rate, we had a 90% tax rate," he said. He also noted that big companies such as Honeywell, JetBlue, Netflix, Amazon and General Motors are paying no federal taxes. “So there’s plenty of room on the $10-million earners,” he added.
Cavuto interrupted: "Then why not do something that Elizabeth Warren was advocating, go after those companies if that's the route you're going to take?"
And then, Cavuto “asked,” "Is this suicidal what he's doing, whatever the virtues it might have?”
Levenson pushed back on the “suicidal” Mondale comparison. “What Bernie's doing is aspirational,” Levenson said.
"Where's the good news on that?" the other guest, Hitha Herzog, interrupted.
Levenson shot back that providing health care for all is “good news.”
FACT: Medicare for All is very popular.
But not with Herzog. She’d rather people go without affordable health care. "Being a small business owner, I can tell you that having this universal health care and having to in the past pay for that … was a massive impact on me." She was talking about Obamacare.
"That's why we need to get rid of the insurance companies," Levenson said.
Herzog whined that Medicare is "nowhere near the type of service that you get with private insurance." Of course, that depends on your plan. Apparently, she did not suffer so much from Obamacare that she was unable to get a top-notch plan for herself.
Cavuto got back to the “loser Bernie” meme – and expanded it to the other top-tier Democrats. “Do any of you worry” Cavuto began, “that some of the prominent candidates are kissing their chances good-bye?”
Watch it below, from the April 16, 2019 Your World with Neil Cavuto.