Rep. Tim Burchett was piercing the Big Lie.
In an appearance Saturday on MSNBC’s “Symone,” the Tennessee Republican needed only one line to expose host Symone Sanders as the propagandist she is, rather than the “advocate for the viewer” she claims to be.
Even in the walled-off world of the MSNBC audience, the message might have gotten through.
The moment occurred toward the end of Burchett’s interview about the House vote to approve an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, according to Fox News.
When Sanders declared that she hadn’t “heard a high crime or misdemeanor yet,” Burchett responded, “Are you going to let me answer the question, ma’am?”
Trending:
“I know you’re a Democrat operative and you’ve worked for a Democrat consulting firm …”
House Republicans, including @RepTimBurchett, voted in favor of the impeachment inquiry against @POTUS despite lack of concrete evidence. @SymoneDSanders sets the record straight and provides a fact-check to their claims. pic.twitter.com/srty1lI7CA
— SYMONE (@symonemsnbc) December 16, 2023
That’s when Sanders cut him off. “All right, Congressman, let’s do it then since we’re here,” she said. “We’re out of time, but we’re going to do it.
Do you support the Biden impeachment inquiry?
“I did use to advise a number of individuals. I’ve also advised some corporations and companies. But here I’m just here to be an advocate for the viewer. And I will ask you, one last time, what is the evidence that the committee has that Joe Biden, while he was president, committed a high crime, misdemeanor or treason, because that is the bar for an impeachment inquiry?”
(As an aside, remember all the evidence against then-President Donald Trump when Democrats launched their fake impeachment inquiry back in 2019? Don’t worry about it. Neither does anyone else.)
Clearly, Sanders thought it was a Perry Mason moment, given the hectoring tone of the question and the steely-eyed stare that followed. But Burchett, no neophyte to hardball politics, was unfazed.
“You have to ask yourself, ma’am, why does a vice president or a president get $40,000 through a Chinese communist corporation …”
And Sanders cut him off again.
“Thank you, Congressman, it’s always a pleasure, but you can’t come on here and lie,” she said, as Burchett literally laughed out loud.
The important point here isn’t the impeachment inquiry discussion. There’s not a Democrat in Congress or the establishment media who would concede the “big guy” was guilty of anything even if they caught him in a back room at the White House with two of Hunter’s hookers and that plastic coke baggie from locker No. 50.
A little thing like bank records tracing a paper trail from Communist China directly to $40,000 in a Biden bank account isn’t going to move that needle.
What matters here is how Burchett framed the debate — in a way that put Sanders back on her heels.
“I know you’re a Democrat operative,” he said.
That forced her to acknowledge she “used to advise a number of individuals” as well as “some corporations and companies.”
But Sanders wasn’t just a consultant to “individuals” who happened to share her leftist politics. She was brought on as a senior adviser (at the age of 29!) to then-candidate Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in April 2019, only days after Biden officially kicked off his bid for the Democratic nomination.
Before that, she was the press secretary for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. As the black women’s publication Essence reported in August 2015, Sanders aimed to use her “activist background to integrate the Black Lives Matter movement into Bernie Sanders’ campaign.”
A leftist with that kind of background is going to be no more an “advocate for the viewer” than former Clinton White House confidant George Stephanopoulos is going to be a fair interviewer for Republicans.
Scorpions are going to be scorpions, as the one in the old tale tells it: “It’s in my nature.”
They’ll stab you in the back because that’s what they do.
Now, a lying, snake-in-the-grass talking head might be exactly what MSNBC viewers are looking for — as long as the snake-in-the-grass lies are coming from the left, of course.
But it was important for Burchett to make the point anyway.
The considerable power the establishment media maintains in the United States is its veneer of impartiality. While most Americans have a healthy, basic distrust of the mainstream media, that distrust isn’t nearly as strong as it should be. (Probably because normal people have normal lives to live. A more-or-less accurate rendering of the news will do the job.)
It’s only if Republicans point out, over and over, that the talking heads on television, the editors in their executive suites and the lords of social media are largely dishonest about how their political sympathies skew their editorial and business decisions that Americans will grow the kind of skepticism they need to view the country’s issues fairly.
(The 2020 election could well have been determined by how the mainstream media and social media giants buried the Hunter Biden laptop story at the behest of the FBI, no less.)
When Burchett exposed the Big Lie — that an interviewer on MSNBC (or the establishment media overall) has any real interest other than protecting the Biden White House and advancing the progressive agenda — he pierced a veil that continues to darken American journalism, as it has for decades.
Symone Sanders clearly didn’t like it when Burchett called her out — her reaction showed it, her obfuscation showed it and her belligerence showed it. The fact that she tried to call it a “lie” is probably the most telling point of all.
A scorpion is a scorpion. It’s in their nature.
And at some point, even an MSNBC viewer might notice.
