Image: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
If there’s one thing Fox “News” conservatives are good at, it’s finding new ways to blame President Obama for their own party’s policies. This 4th of July was no different.
This time around, Fox Republicans are blaming Obama for the financial hits from the Republican sequester that Obama kept telling Republicans would be a very bad thing and should not be allowed to stand. And note the racial resentment cherry on top of Fox Nation’s headline. “Obama Spends $100M on African Trip But Cancels Marines’ July 4th Fireworks.”
Just how disingenuous of a title is that for the AP story? Well, in the story it clearly spells out that the boom is gone because of budget cuts and furloughed fireworks. Who is to blame? The AP says, “The failure in Washington to follow up a 2011 budget pact with additional spending cuts meant $85 billion across-the-board cuts that began in March. Budgets tightened, the military took a major hit and many federal workers absorbed pay cuts through forced furloughs.”
It is Republicans in the House who refuse to begin the process of budget reconciliation, so… that leaves a finger pointing right at Republicans unless you work at Fox “News”. President Obama has been warning the nation about the then impending sequester since at least February.
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
Even Speaker John Boehner admits that President Obama didn’t want the sequester cuts. We got here because Republicans refused to raise the debt ceiling to pay for their spending. The threat of sequester be added into the Budget Act of 2011 in order to force both sides to compromise when the time came. The time came, and Republicans refused to compromise — or rather, Speaker Boehner couldn’t get his Tea Party caucus to compromise with the Speaker’s own proposals. House Republicans refused to raise a dime of revenue.
And here we are, still waiting for House Republicans to be willing to sit down with the Senate to begin budget reconciliation because- oh, they cared so much about the budget, they cared so much that they had to bring this country to her knees and ruin her credit. But now that the budget depends upon them, meh. Budget schmudget. Did you hear about Obama’s Africa trip? IRS! Benghazi!
Nowhere in this story did the AP mention Obama’s Africa trip, which by the way was not a vacation, and that $100 million number is an estimate off of a Washington Post story based on the Secret Service’s estimate of previous president’s trips which claimed that it could cost between $60 and $100 million. Furthermore, although it’s the meme of the moment for the jingoistic Republicans, all presidents’ trips to Africa are expensive. First Lady Laura Bush went five times, and even took a safari.
If anyone canceled the fireworks, it is House Republicans, many of whom championed sequestration for years before they actually managed to make it happen in what they called a victory.
This is what happens when a party doesn’t really stand for anything but stirring up anger and resentment at Others. Eventually, they’re left holding nothing other than decaying turds of transparently empty and willfully ignorant rage now known as their “platform”.
As evidence that this has happened, Republicans blame the results of their own party’s sequester on the President, as if they do not support these results when in fact they are supposed to be cheering the cuts because they pass off their hatred under the guise of “fiscal conservatism”. But truly, it was never about the policy. It was only about being Against Obama.
If Republicans stood for anything, they’d be cheering their sequester cuts that took the fireworks away from the Marines, but instead their pretending they had nothing to do with it and using it to jack up racial resentment against this President because Africa is getting the Marine’s money. Get it? Let me spell out the inaccurate Fox narrative for you: Because of the black president, the money for the white people/aka, the “real Americans” (apparently in their fictional world, the troops are all white) is going to black people in Africa.
Back in reality land, the Obama’s spent July 4th as they always do — “celebrating with more than 1,200 military heroes and their families at the White House for an Independence Day celebration.” They even live-streamed the “Salute to the Military” USO Concert and the fireworks over the National Mall.
Image: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP via SacBee
Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
