Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 08:41 pm
During Sunday’s edition of Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace continued his network’s deliberately dishonest reporting on the Affordable Care Act. During the last part of the show, Wallace brought up the fact that the ACA passed 5 million signups with two weeks left to go in the enrollment period. He then allowed his panel, obviously tilted to the right, to discuss what this means. In typical fashion, Wallace allowed bald-faced lies to pass through with nary a correction or a follow-up question.
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One of Wallace’s panel guests was vapid conservative radio host Laura Ingraham. Wallace allowed her to get the first say on the discussion about the healthcare law. To nobody’s surprise, both she and Wallace pushed forward a conspiracy theory that the Obama Administration is scared about the number of young people signing up and is purposely not releasing that information.
WALLACE: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius still trying to reach out to young people as today we mark the fourth anniversary of President Obama signing the Affordable Care Act into law. And we’re back now with the panel. Well, the latest administration figure as of mid-March is that $5 million people have now signed up on the ObamaCare exchange. But they still won’t say how many of them are the so-called young invincibles. They still won’t say how many of them were previously uninsured. And they still won’t say how many of them have actually paid for their policies. Laura, do you think they don’t know, really don’t know or they are just not saying?
LAURA INGRAHAM, HOST, “THE LAURA INGRAHAM SHOW”: They can follow every keystroke on our computers. We don’t think they know the facts on this? Of course they do. Look, if the facts were really good, I think Jay Carney would be crowing. The fact that, wow, we have 42 percent of young people have now signed up. They’re paying their premiums. We’re on track. We might be a little low, but we’re strong, we’re vital, we’re moving forward. I think they would do that, right? I think it doesn’t make any sense for them not to tell us. But the fact is even among groups that are traditionally very favorable to the president, Latinos, for example, we’ve seen the numbers in California go up somewhat in the final push to March 31st, but still lagging way beyond behind what they want. And that’s why Obama as the Russian troops are amassing goes on “Ellen,” you know, he goes on the “Two Ferns” show on the Internet. They’re doing everything. You know, Sebelius, talks about March madness so we think she’s really cool now because she actually knows what March madness is. She probably picked Stephen Austin, you know, Stephen F. Austin, now — to go to the final four.
WALLACE: They won the first round.
INGRAHAM: Yeah, right. But she would have said that they were the final ppick. But none of this is mattering. I mean the fact you can throw-in some pop culture references and go on some of these cool comedy shows isn’t going to change the fact that most young people are — want choice. They want freedom. And they don’t want to be told what to do on health care. I think this is going to be a big, big problem in November.
Let’s just get it out there. Ingraham is an awful person who only knows how to spit out vitriol and hateful rhetoric. It is her stock and trade. She delivers it all in an extremely monotone delivery that makes a normal person want to cry if they have to listen to her for more than a couple of minutes. Yet, she has her own radio show and is a constant presence on Fox News. I guess you can get gainful employment from conservative bosses if you follow the script, throw out a lot of Obama hate and dye your hair blonde.
Anyway, Wallace let Bob Woodward prattle on about some anecdotal tale about Obamacare being stuck in first gear. He then threw a question to Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld’s former right-hand man and one of the key architects of the Iraq War. Wolfowitz used his time to push forward already debunked talking points about the number of cancellations that have occurred under the ACA.
WALLACE: Well, we haven’t heard from you on ObamaCare, as former head of the World Bank. What do you think of how it is going so far?
PAUL WOLFOWITZ, FORMER DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: The World Bank doesn’t have much to do with this. But you know, it seems to me I hear numbers. I think it is correct, if 5 million people had their policies canceled, the ones that they were promised they could keep. Presumably, some of that 5 million of new enrollees are just people who got kicked out and they are back in. This was supposed to reduce the number of uninsured. It may actually have increased the number. I think Nancy Pelosi famously said, we have to pass the bill so you know what is in it. Well, they passed the bill and there are so many changes by administrative — I don’t think the authors any longer know what is in it. It’s — you can’t reform 17 percent of the economy with 900 pages of legislation that nobody’s bothered to read.
Jesus Christ! Seriously, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) was already fact-checked about this huge whopper of a lie that the number of uninsured has actually increased under the law. On top of that, he is also trying to pass off the number of people who have had their policies cancelled as 5 million. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) released a report over two months ago that completely debunked this Republican meme. Of course, it doesn’t stop Republicans from still claiming it as true.
To wrap it all up, Wolfowitz also took the normal conservative jab at Nancy Pelosi about needing to pass the bill first before reading it. Overall, it was just a sad, sad display from Wolfowitz that should have been torn apart by even a halfway competent moderator. Yet, Wallace is not that guy. He just allowed all of that to go uncontested and moved on to another panelist. Disgracefully, he allowed Wolfowitz to get away with two huge lies and a tired talking point that was passe 3 years ago.
As always, the Sunday shows are where Republicans go to lie. And Fox News Sunday is where they are most welcome.
Justin Baragona is the Managing Editor at Politicus Sports as well as Senior Editor at PoliticusUSA. He was a political writer for 411Mania.com before joining PoliticusUSA. Politically, Justin considers himself a liberal but also a realist and pragmatist. Currently, Justin lives in St. Louis, MO and is married. Besides writing, he also runs his own business after spending a number of years in the corporate world. You can follow Justin on Twitter either with his personal handle (@justinbaragona) or the Sports site’s (@PoliticusSports).
