Day: January 9, 2019

Democrats Got Higher TV Rating than Trump’s Address

Buck Banks

4%

“President Trump’s televised Oval Office address on immigration Tuesday drew a big audience. The response from Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer drew a slightly bigger audience, at least according to preliminary figures,” according to the Hollywood Reporter. “The quarter hour (9-9:15 p.m. ET) containing the president’s speech drew a combined 28.1 household rating in metered markets on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, CNN, Fox News and NBC. The following 15 minutes, including analysis and the Pelosi-Schumer rebuttal, averaged 29.3 across those same networks, a bump of about 4 percent.”

Trump’s Address a Stephen Miller Production

Buck Banks

“The 33-year-old White House speechwriter has a hand in virtually everything the president reads from a teleprompter. But as one of the most strident immigration hawks in the West Wing, Miller has been especially influential over the past two years in shaping the way Trump talks about his signature issue. Tuesday night was reportedly no exception. … While it’s impossible to say just how much of the address he wrote, all of the tics and tropes of Millerian rhetoric were on display. The scary immigrants (‘vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs’). The gory anecdotes (a veteran ‘beaten to death with a hammer by an illegal alien’). The decidedly un-Trumpian flourishes (‘a crisis of the heart, and a crisis of the soul.’)”

— McKay Coppins

Murkowski Wants to Reopen Government

Buck Banks

“I am one who is amenable to a process that would allow for those appropriations bills that have concluded some time ago that they be enacted into law — whether it’s the Department of Interior or the IRS. I’d like to see that.”

— Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), joining calls today to reopen the rest of the federal government before the funding fight over the border wall is resolved, CNN reports.

Border Crisis Is the New Death Panels

Jon Ponder

Trump and his surrogates have spent the two weeks since Trump shut down the government promoting their latest big lie — that there is a crisis at the southern border.

But after years of being on the receiving end of Trump’s lies, the media ain’t buying it. Check out this list of fact-check articles about the Oval Office speech he gave last night from mainstream media outlets:

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