Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 12:50 am
Fox Entertainment (aka, “news”) anchor Gregg Jarrett was working hard for his GOP today, but Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) was having none of it. Jarrett was trying to blame the President for not talking to Republicans. Van Hollen schooled the silly man with this, “Why is that? Do you know the answer to why that is? Why is that? It’s because Speaker Boehner walked away from the talks he was having with the president. That’s a matter of public record.”
Apparently they don’t “do” public records in Fox News’ “brain room”.
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Here is the video:
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Transcript:
Jarrett: You’ve got 20 million Americans unemployed or underemployed, and these are people who are desperate to put food on their table, to pay their rent, to keep the roof over their houses, and they have no expectation that Congress is going to do anything to help them. Don’t they deserve more than that?
Van Hollen: Well, certainly millions of Americans are out there struggling, and certainly they deserve a Congress that will avoid going over the fiscal cliff, which is why the president has been working hard to bring the leaders together…
Jarrett: Has he really?
Van Hollen: ….I think you and your viewers should know that Speaker Boehner has absolutely refused to even hold a vote on the bill that passed the Senate which would avoid the tax fiscal cliff. We aren’t even asking him to vote for it, just hold a vote. Let the people’s house do its business.
Jarrett: It takes more than one side to compromise, congressman. You know that compromise is endemic in Washington politics. And the president, we looked it up today, and I had our brain room confirm it, and they say there has been no face to face discussion between the president and anybody on the Republican side in eleven days. He’s the leader of the country. He can call a discussion anytime he wants, and he hasn’t, which does question the sincerity of the president.
Van Hollen: Why is that? Do you know the answer to why that is? Why is that? It’s because Speaker Boehner walked away from the talks he was having with the president.That’s a matter of public record. The president can’t force the speaker to talk. What happened was the speaker walked out of the talks with the president. The speaker then decided to come up with a plan that says he is going to ask people making over a million dollars to pay a little bit more in taxes to help reduce the deficit. It was rejected by his own party, so then he sent his members home on vacation. I’m over on the Senate side, right now. They’re in session. Speaker Boehner let the House members go. So first he walked out on talks with the president, then he sent everybody home.
Van Hollen knows of what he speaks, because he is the top Democratic spot on the House Budget Committee. He’s also a lawyer and has a masters in public policy. In other words, Jarrett’s worst nightmare: Someone who knows something about the topic at hand.
The “brain room” at Fox might wish to recall that this is not the first time Boehner has walked out on Obama in the middle of a looming fiscal crisis. The speaker also walked out during talks that created this fiscal cliff. In July of 2011, the New York Times reported, “Negotiations over a broad deficit reduction plan collapsed in acrimony on Friday after Speaker John A. Boehner suddenly broke off talks with President Obama, raising the risk of an economy-shaking default.”
Good thing Gregg knew what Republicans would say to each of Jarrett’s facts. I mean, heck, it’s like fair and balanced over there. In Fox world, Boehner didn’t really go home empty handed after being humiliated by his own caucus. In Fox world, this is all Obama’s fault because he is not “sincere.” No, it’s not the Congress, which is set to “go down in American history as the most unproductive session since the 1940s.”
When asked for comment on the record of the 112th Congress, Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), pointed to the 115 times the Republican minority has held up a bill’s passage by threatening to filibuster it. House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) office did not return a request for comment.
No, it’s not the GOP’s filibusters or the tea crazy House. Don’t look at the facts, you evil liberals. It’s the President, ‘cuz Jarrett can feel it in his brain room.
Only a Fox News viewer would accept such a fallacy as a given. What proof do we have that Gregg Jarrett can read Obama’s mind and heart? None. But he is positive that he knows Obama’s motives, just because. So he bases his entire argument on this fallacy and when confronted by Van Hollen’s facts, Jarrett’s snide condescension morphs into duck and dodge avoidance. HOT HOT HOT ball!
In Fox world, Obama’s intentions are free game and the fiscal cliff is his, too. He’s the big bad boogeyman that brings them ratings gold from the primitives. They watch with their fear/rage center set on high alert just waiting for the hate crack to be delivered from the pusher. Check.
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