One can hardly contain one’s astonishment. In fact, my own “shocked” expression might remain forever frozen.
Ready for this? The establishment media colludes with Democrats, and the federal government swindles Americans. Who knew?
Thursday on social media platform X, with the prospect of a government shutdown looming, independent investigative journalist and former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson shared what she called a “[q]uick story about govt. shutdowns and the theatrics behind them.”
Attkisson recalled that around 2013, she and CBS News colleagues searched in vain for a government shutdown’s “real life impact.”
“When we couldn’t find any, *that* should have been part of the story. Instead, we kept trying to create the appearance of an impact,” she wrote.
Attkisson then attributed their behavior to journalists’ tendency to fit facts to a predetermined narrative.
Of course, they had plenty of help from Democrats, including then-President Barack Obama’s administration.
“Anyway, the Ds were blaming Rs for the shutdown, so we were calling Ds and the Obama administration for ideas to report what was the real impact. Taking our cue, these officials fabricated impact that we could report,” she wrote.
The fabrication came in the form of cordoning off public monuments in Washington, D.C.
Are you surprised that Democrat officials literally helped a reporter fake a story to trick American voters?
“We knew and even discussed in the newsroom that this made no sense. These monuments weren’t ‘manned’ to begin with,” she wrote.
Attkisson characterized this incident as simply the most memorable among multiple acts of shutdown-related theater and deceit.
“There are other examples but this is the one I remember the most,” she concluded.
Quick story about govt. shutdowns and the theatrics behind them. One year when I was reporting at CBS News during a govt. shutdown, I think 2013, we were sincerely searching for real life impact. When we couldn’t find any, *that* should have been part of the story. Instead, we…
— Sharyl Attkisson 🕵️♂️💼🥋 (@SharylAttkisson) December 20, 2024
The 63-year-old Attkisson, author of “Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism” (2020), has made amends for that behavior, though she certainly qualified as old enough to know better at the time.
The real story, however, involves two facts that remain relevant to this day.
First, the establishment media will stoop to any degree of dishonesty, provided it helps Democrats.
CBS’s own “60 Minutes,” for instance, got caught doctoring an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris in October during her failed presidential campaign.
Second, Democrats and their allies in the Republican establishment desperately want Americans to regard the federal government as essential. After all, the federal government functions as the mechanism by which the establishment plunders American citizens.
According to U.S. News & World Report, suburbs of Washington, D.C. accounted for five of the 10 wealthiest counties in America by median household income in 2023. Only a massive transfer of wealth to the nation’s capital can produce a statistic like that.
Thus, government shutdowns temporarily save Americans from their own government.
Of course, Democrats’ allies in the establishment media would go to any length to convince us otherwise.
I remain too “shocked” for words.
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