ABC, NBC Finally Acknowledge Existence of Gruber Videos
A guy I work with doesn't watch Fox News and when I told him about this scandal he said he never heard of it and either I or Fox was making up the story. Now that it's 9 days old, even if he finally heard about the story, he'll call it old news even though he'll be impacted by Obamacare for the rest of his life.
Quote:By Jeffrey Meyer | November 16, 2014 | 12:10 PM EST
It took nine days, but ABC and NBC finally covered the controversial videos of ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber making disparaging remarks about the American voters.
Since the first video surfaced, CBS had been the only “big three” (ABC, CBS, and NBC) network to cover the Gruber video, but on Sunday, November 16 ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos and NBC’s Meet the Press briefly mentioned the videos. However, as of this writing, ABC and NBC’s morning and evening newscasts have yet to mention the Gruber controversy once.
During an interview with Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd appeared almost apologetic at having to ask his guest about the Gruber videos:
I got to ask you about these comments from Jonathan Gruber. He’s of course, a lot of opponents of the Affordable Care Act have been pointing to these comments all week long. He's an MIT professor. He helped write the health care law both in Massachusetts. An adviser to the healthcare law and people that wrote it back when the Obama administration was working on it. I understand you didn't necessarily work with him very closely.
Todd did eventually concede that Gruber’s “playing into every fear that many conservatives had about this bill. That it’s not transparent, that there are things in it that people don't know. This certainly can't help a credibility gap” but for some reason felt the need to qualify his questioning by helping to distance Ms. Burwell from any connection to Gruber.
Over on ABC, fill-in moderator Martha Raddatz and the entire This Week panel were much more critical of Gruber’s comments. Jonathan Karl, ABC’s Chief White House Correspondent, at first tried to minimize Gruber's involvement in the White House but eventually admitted that the architect profited off of ObamaCare.
Look, Jonathan Gruber was not the legislative tactician, he was not on the White House staff but he did have $400,000 contract. By the way, ObamaCare has been very profitable to Jonathan Gruber. He had contracts for about the same with several other states, another $2 million in contracts on Medicare. This is a -- you know, this to Republicans is about as big a deal as you can get.
Democratic strategist Donna Brazile continued ABC's criticism of Gruber:
We love gaffe politics and the first rule and I call it the Donna rule is that you never call voters stupid. The second rule is you never call voters stupid with a microphone and a camera. And the third rule is if you call voters stupid and you don't respect them, then you know what, you should get this kind of treatment on national television.
While ABC and NBC did cover Jonathan Gruber’s offensive comments on their Sunday morning political shows, unfortunately it took them nine days to mention it. One wonders if ABC and NBC's morning and evening newscasts will ever report on Gruber's comments or will they only exist on their Sunday morning talk shows.
/
ABC, NBC Finally Acknowledge Existence of Gruber Videos
