Steve Scalise spread the racist Big Lie that the election was stolen. He incited the Jan. 6 riot and voted to overturn the election
On @ThisWeekABC he was rewarded with 10 minutes of airtime and pushed the lie again
The networks are actively helping Republicans spread this lie
@ThisWeekABC There is no good-faith explanation for inviting a Big Liar onto your show to ask them about anything at all, let alone the very topic they spent months lying about to overthrow democracy
How can a journalist say Scalise should be trusted while still participating in the Big Lie?
This interview started with an open mic to Scalise to slam Biden on school reopenings and the covid relief bill, as if he’s a good-faith actor with no context at all. Then at the end we get “by the way do you think the election was real? No? Ok thanks for coming on”
This happens every week. Today it was Steve Scalise. On every Sunday since the election—even after the Jan. 6 riot—Big Liars have been rewarded by mainstream media, especially on @ThisWeekABC
@ABC is laundering the Big Lie—an insane conspiracy theory—on its legitimate platform
@ThisWeekABC@ABC This is beyond being “complicit” or whatever generous Ivanka-ey term you might use
It’s not like these Big Liars are surprising the hosts. They’ve announced they worship the Big Lie. Scalise JUST MET WITH TRUMP and is bragging about it. He’s obviously going to keep lying!
Booking Big Liars on and defending the practice of booking Big Liars has the same result as spreading the Big Lie yourself
If you know they’re going to lie, and you let them lie live — in a throwaway question at the end of the interview — you also lied!
This isn’t as egregious but simultaneously on @CNNSotu there was an interview with Michael McCaul, who refused to acknowledge Biden won for 6 weeks
He wasn’t asked about his role in supporting the Big Lie. It’s easy to do this and would be refreshing if live interviewers asked
@CNNSotu A huge problem with Sunday Show Journalism is that the hosts are all white and most don’t realize the Big Lie was racist. Republicans engineered a mass deception campaign to invalidate Black votes to overturn an election. These news hosts now shrug it off as a policy difference
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Turn on the Sunday shows and this is what you get—
ABC: The election was stolen
NBC: The election was stolen
CBS: The election was stolen
Fox: The election was stolen
Turn on the Sunday shows on a different day and this is what you get—
ABC: The election was stolen
NBC: The election was stolen
CBS: The election was stolen
Fox: The election was stolen
The election was stolen the election was stolen the election was stolen the election was stolen the election was stolen the election was stolen the election was stolen the election was stolen the election was stolen the election was stolen the election was stolen the election was
@ThisWeekABC just booked Steve Scalise — one of the biggest pushers of the Big Lie that the election was stolen
Scalise is a liar. He is dishonest. He is going to lie again and again
These news shows are helping Republicans rewrite history
ABC has been booking Big Liars for months. On Feb. 7 they rewarded Roger Wicker for lying about the election and let him push the bogus claim that the impeachment trial was unconstitutional. He was never asked about pushing lies about "voter fraud"
ABC also booked Rand Paul who, TO THIS DAY, is claiming the election was stolen. He was allowed to lie about this for an entire segment on @ThisWeekABC
This story reveals text messages showing Cruz lied about how long he wanted to stay in Cancun. It even goes into his history as a self-promoter since 2013
Also doesn't mention the Jan. 6 riot once—the insurrection he led. Their history is being erased nytimes.com/2021/02/18/us/…
Attacking the government and trying to overturn a presidential election should be something that follows you for the rest of your life, not a random news event that becomes stale after a month just because you did something else really stupid
"History will remember" is a joke
Members of Congress called on Cruz to resign or be expelled because he led a deadly insurrection based on a lie. Probably worth at least a casual mention in a deep dive of someone's divisive history in which the news peg is another lie he's telling
It’s harder to find examples of this now that Trump’s account has been deleted but before he figured out how to publish all the tweets in a thread at once, he would do them one at a time (like I am now) and often the time stamps were embarrassingly far apart
This usually happened in the morning and he’d end a tweet like “The only thing to do is.......” with like a billion .......’s and everyone would be like “wtf is he gonna say, it’s been 20 minutes” and then he’d pop off the conclusion, something delusional. It took him forever
This stuff is easily google-able. Erasing their history as election deniers encourages them to lie again. This is a simple, effective, objective and accurate way to provide context to what Republicans are now saying about the insurrection they all helped incite in different ways
"Roy Blunt, who spread Trump's Big Lie that Biden didn't win the election for more than five weeks, now says about whether videos might change his mind..."
Constantly giving Republicans the benefit of the doubt, suggesting they’re good people who will do the right thing—when all the evidence of the last four years would lead anyone to say the exact opposite—is not just misleading but incredibly generous to a party of fascist killers
Chuck Todd is going to invite a Republican senator who pushed the Big Lie onto Meet the Press on Sunday and thank them for sharing their perspective after they say this is the time to come together, not to divide