Last updated on January 9th, 2019 at 11:33 am

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Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer stopped Trump‘s plan to spread lies and misinformation about immigration dead in its tracks.

Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer said in a joint statement provided to PoliticusUSA:

The facts are clear: President Trump has the power to stop hurting the country by re-opening the government and ending the Trump Shutdown.

Democrats and an increasing number of Republicans in Congress have repeatedly urged the President and Leader McConnell to end the Trump Shutdown and re-open the government while Congress debates the President’s expensive and ineffective wall. Unfortunately, President Trump keeps rejecting the bipartisan House-passed bills, which have already received strong bipartisan support in the Senate, to re-open the government. Instead, he is still demanding that American taxpayers pay at least $5.7 billion for his wall, which can’t pass either chamber of Congress and of course, Mexico is not paying for.

Now that the television networks have decided to air the President’s address, which if his past statements are any indication will be full of malice and misinformation, Democrats must immediately be given equal airtime.

On Day One of the new Congress, the House passed bipartisan legislation that honors our responsibility to protect the American people with funding for smart, effective border security solutions – just not the President’s wasteful and ineffective wall.

Pelosi and Schumer want more than a rebuttal

The Democrats want more than a few minutes for a rebuttal. They want equal airtime, which means that if Trump gets to lie for 20 minutes about the non-crisis on the border, Democrats should also have 20 minutes to give the nation the facts. The television networks are making a big mistake by giving Trump this airtime live. They should have adopted the MSNBC policy of tape-delaying and fact-checking Trump before his comments are put on the air.

Malice and misinformation is a great description of what Trump is going to say. The White House has admitted that Trump will make no new news, so if the president is going to take to the national airwaves to spread lies and misinformation, Democrats and the truth must be given equal time.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association