Media Cheers 'Massive Victory' as Big Spending Freedom Caucus Explodes the Deficit

Republican holdouts in the Freedom Caucus folded again, voting to add trillions to the deficit while gutting basic needs for The People. This was referred to as a "massive victory" by Jake Sherman.

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Breaking news, the Freedom Caucus folded again!

Just kidding, the Freedom Caucus seems to fold every time Trump says jump.

The Freedom Caucus is a MAGA support group focused on immigration and their hatred for LGBTQI+ communities while masquerading as caring about the “deficit.” It’s “states’ rights” as cover for racist policies all over again.

The "Freedom Caucus” was established in 2015 as a rebirth of the Tea Party, and they identify as budget hawks who insist on limiting government spending. Apparently, they haven’t finished their transition from Big Spenders yet, so they voted to “explode” the debt.

But in true form, the media continues to call them budget hawks, and the media wonders why people aren’t watching and reading.

These ‘deficit hawks’ just voted to gut basic needs for The People, while simultaneously saddling us all with wasteful spending adding trillions to the deficit, which we will all pay for — again.

So it’s not just that they voted to deny food for hungry children, take healthcare away from millions, raise grocery costs, imperil over 300 rural hospitals and 500 nursing homes nationwide, and saddle Medicaid enrollees with additional costs, but they’re doing it while going against their supposed first principle — the one for which they were willing to ruin the United States credit rating. They have shut down the government over their “deficit” concerns.

But here they are, the reason for the deficits again.

Media Framing

Yet they are still referred to as their chosen label of deficit hawks from the very people who are cheering on this “MASSIVE VICTORY,” because not everyone in the beltway agrees that gutting basic needs for the people is bad.

Jake Sherman at Punchbowl News was yelling about Speaker Mike Johnson and Trump being on the brink of a “massive victory” this morning, to which Joe Cavello replied, “Considering Jake's net worth, the reality is this bill is a "MASSIVE VICTORY" for him and everyone in his tax bracket. So it's totally understandable and acceptable that his framing is celebratory. Not super complicated”.

It’s a wonder that the framing is not “Trump and Johnson’s Big Spending Bill Set to Pass, Adding Trillions to Deficit,” especially given how the media justifies the Freedom Caucus threatening the full faith and credit of the US every time they hold the nation hostage over “spending” and “deficits.”

It comes down to the interesting choice our media has made to frame tax cuts as something other than spending. “Spending” is bad when spending is spent on The People, on social safety nets. But “spending” by earning less revenue while not making enough to pay the bills is not spending to them, even though it ends up in the same place: In debt.

Just see how they frame this when someone on welfare buys an iPhone, and it becomes clear that the high value our culture places on cutting taxes for the rich is not consistent with its contempt for “spending.”

Whatever the reasons behind Sherman’s framing, it is true that most of the big name people reporting on these policies make a lot more money than most Americans. It’s also true that some of them are from dynasty families, like Anderson Cooper of Vanderbilt wealth. It would be foolish to think that they can understand, let alone relate or care about, the budgets of people who make in a year what these people make in a day or a week.

This might explain their condescending contempt for the concerns of “activists.” Perhaps they think concern about healthcare is much ado about nothing. It is, after all, mere “minutiae” according to our Vice President, whose healthcare we have funded for several years. Notably, no one is asking Republicans to surrender their healthcare to pay for tax cuts for their circle.

“JD Vance & House Republicans Think 17 Million People Losing Their Health Care is ‘Minutiae’”, the DCCC blasted after Vance’s Let Them Eat Cake moment, in which he also conveniently revealed that he, too, doesn’t care about the CBO score and thus shouldn’t be allowed to claim that he’s fiscally responsible in any way.

At any rate, too much of the media (not reporters or smaller journalists, I’m talking media companies and big names) can afford to cover this like political football. It’s all fun and games, it even generates clicks due to the drama, and that is the goal.

It’s also true that passing the “BBB” would be a “massive victory” for Trump, but it is not a massive victory for Republicans. Anyone framing it that way has not been out in these streets in “Real America,” where even people in 69% Trump districts are enraged over this bill.

In true Trump form, this bill is likely to be a Trump anchor that destroys many of the people who make it happen. Just look at Elon Musk’s brand right now. Everything Trump touches dies, but only after he squeezes it dry of any life to suck up for himself and his family and oligarch buddies.

Cutting healthcare for millions of people is not going to be “popular.” It’s so unpopular that it’s making history. It is not popular right now, no matter how much they lie about what it is and what it does.

AOC just busted Republicans on their “not taxing tips” lie, for example. The not taxing tips was their grand gesture to the working class, from whom they are stealing to justify permanent tax cuts for the wealthy and elites.

It’s wrong that the folks who cover these policy issues don’t cover it from the standpoint of The People; this failure is hardly just one person. The New York Times economic reporter claiming it wasn’t their job to inform the public of Joe Biden’s policies, especially when those policies served the public, was another example of this in action.

The question readers and viewers should be asking themselves is who does this coverage serve? From whose vantage point is it being told to us? Who is being centered?

Because mainstream media outlets that frame themselves as “objective” are actually siding with corporate interests and the wealthy. That is not objectivity, but they get away with framing it that way because the very people who get to decide what is “objective” are the gatekeepers using that language.

Policy Wonks Not Impressed