ABC News got its just desserts on Sunday, when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made an appearance on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” to discuss with George the government shutdown and correctly characterize it as the Democrats holding the innocent Americans hostage while they try to refuse to acknowledge that they no longer run the country.
Bessent made it clear—because, you know, it’s the truth— that the Democrats’ aim was to sabotage Trump’s record going into the midterm, as he described the “human costs” of the Left’s tantrum including holiday air travel, cargo transport and supply chain disruptions. When Stephanopoulos acted as he always does, as an advocate for his political party, Bessent pointed out his hypocrisy.
“You were involved in a lot of these in the ’90s,” Bessent said to the former Senior Advisor to President Bill Clinton, reminding viewers of Stephanopoulos’s statements then accusing the GOP of “terrorism” and creating a “hostage crisis” during the government shutdown in 1995. Stephanopoulos had proudly characterized his rhetoric positively in his memoir, “All Too Human.”
Stephanopoulos tried to duck the issue by saying, “I can disagree with you about the history there, but we don’t do history lesson right now.” In fact we do. ABC shattered all previous conflicts of interest precedents by hiring such a pure partisan as a TV news moderator during the very administration he had been paid to spin for, and unlike other, better, more responsible political aides tapped by the networks (such as the late, great Tim Russert) George has made few genuine attempts at submerging his loyalties.
Bessent, however, came armed for combat. “I’ve got all your quotes here, George,” he said. “I’m sure you do. But let’s talk about the situation right now,” Stephanopoulos responded, but Bessent was not to be denied. “I went back and read your book. So, you got one purchase on Amazon this week. And that’s very much what you said.”
Here is what George said to PBS Frontline about that shutdown in 1995…
“Our strategy was very simple. We couldn’t buckle, and we had to say that they were blackmailing the country to get their way. In order to get their tax cut, they were willing to shut down the government, throw the country into default for the first time in its history and cut Medicare, Social Security, education and the environment just so they could get their way. And we were trying to say that they were basically terrorists, and it worked.”
The correct characterization was supposed to elude the public this time because Democrats could count on their propaganda warping public perception.
The shutdown is 100% the Democrats fault, and ethically indefensible as a political tactic. The reason the insurance premiums are spiking is because the Democrats lied (“If you like your healthcare plan…”) and used every trick in the book to pass a sweeping law that did nothing to suppress rising healthcare costs.
The subsidies were slated to go to many illegal immigrants, and the news media assisted Democrats as they denied that fact. Blaming Republicans for not allowing Democrats to achieve their goals by holding air travelers, government employees, military personnel and more hostage makes as much sense as blaming Israel for not capitulating to Hamas to have their hostages returned—wait, come to think of it, Democrats advocated that, too.
From the moment ABC hired Stephanopoulos, I pointed out what an clear breach of journalism ethics it was, originally on my old ethics site “The Ethics Scoreboard,” and on Ethics Alarms in essays like this one, when George made no effort to hide his loyalties, and this, where I officially marked him as an Ethics Villain. Bessent’s attack was fair correct, and conservative and Republican guests should have been doing the same at every opportunity.
Ethics Alarms 
Good for him. No one calls Democrats out for their blatant conflicts of interests and decades-old sloganeering. Before Trump, Romney, McCain, W and Dole were the Nazis. The narrative never changes.
And, of course, George doesn’t want to talk about history here. He doesn’t want it called to attention that he worked for the Clintons and is a Democratic Party hack.
But he’s such a cute boy!
Bessent said: “I went back and read your book. So, you got one purchase on Amazon this week. And that’s very much what you said.”
That is a clever, beautiful, back-handed slap to George, right in the chops. Nicely done, Scott. Nicely done, indeed.
jvb
I have noticed that finally, Trump’s cabinet has not been taking media garbage lying down, and they are coming to the few interviews they are granted well-armed and with receipts.
Good. Yes, very good.
old Georgie forgot that history forgotten is history repeated!
I don’t think this is true: “The subsidies were slated to go to many illegal immigrants” Do you have a source for that?
What I have is this in various places and sources. I am NOT certain, as it appears, that the subsidies are the problem, or Medicaid payments only. If it’s the latter, I’ll repair the post. Here’s this from the Washington Stand:
“Democrats’ proposal would result in nearly $200 billion spent on healthcare for illegal immigrants and other non-citizens over the next decade — enough to fund the entire Children’s Health Insurance Program,” according to a White House Fact Sheet issued on Day One of the shutdown.
For their part, Hill Democrats insist that illegal immigrants are not receiving federal benefits under programs like Medicaid because it is illegal, and they demand Republicans agree to repeal the OBBBA reforms, including making permanent the temporary pandemic-related Obamacare subsidies approved during President Joe Biden’s administration. Unless those temporary subsidies are made permanent, they argue, as many as 20 million Americans will soon face staggering premium increases.
Democrats in both chambers of Congress voted for the temporary subsidies when they were first approved by Congress through the American Rescue Act of 2021 and then extended to 2025 by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, both Biden administration-backed proposals. Only the subsidies that were intended to be temporary would expire, according to congress.gov, if Congress doesn’t repeal the provision as Democrats are demanding. The original Obamacare tax credit known as the Premium Tax Credit (PTC) would continue in force.
“They say the Democrats want undocumented immigrants to get the federal dollars of health care. That is utter bull, and they know it. The law prohibits undocumented immigrants from getting payments from Medicare, Medicaid, or the ACA. There is no money — not a penny of federal dollars — that are going there,” Schumer said during a September 30 exchange on the Senate floor with Thune.
But a new internal investigation mounted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) is raising serious questions about the accuracy of Schumer’s assertion that no federal tax dollars are going to provide health care to illegal immigrants.
“CMS’s findings about over a billion dollars in Medicaid benefits getting funneled to illegal immigrants represent the exact sort of waste, fraud, and abuse that the Trump administration is trying to cut — and the exact sort of waste, fraud, and abuse that Democrats want even more of by shutting down our government to give free health care to illegal immigrants,” Trump White House Spokesman Kush Desai told The Washington Stand Monday.
The “findings” Desai referenced had first been explained by CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz on October 16 in a “Fox & Friends” interview.
“Democrats have been gaslighting us on this issue of Medicaid funds going to illegals for quite a while,” Oz told Fox News. “They keep claiming there is no federal money going from Medicaid, the agency I run, to illegal immigrants, so we decided to do our homework. We sent our best investigators out to see exactly what is going on.”
It didn’t take long for the CMS investigators to find multiple examples of Medicaid money going to illegal immigrants, explaining that in “just over the last few months, we have proven that over a billion dollars, that’s with a B, that’s a lot of money, it’s not a rounding error, and it went to illegal immigrants in half a dozen states, and we’re just getting started. So, it’s going to be significantly more money.”
Tax dollars collected from residents in Texas and Florida are “being diverted to places like California” to cover the costs of providing Medicaid benefits to illegal immigrants, he said.
“Now we’re investigating this and we’re going to continue to track it across the country,” Oz said.
Also this: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1496961611355076
This debunks most of what you have up there, and is solidly grounded in research, quoting experts who live and breathe these numbers. https://www.factcheck.org/2025/11/trump-falsely-claims-democrats-want-1-5-trillion-for-illegal-aliens/
As Factcheck notes, there is some Medicaid expenditure for illegal aliens. It is almost entirely absorption by Medicaid of what hospitals pay for ER care for illegal immigrants who need urgent care. I don’t want to live in a country where a person in a car accident, bleeding badly, is kept away from care until we establish their citizenship. That might not be unethical, but it is deeply immoral.
Also, not in what I posted, but some states, like CA, expanded their Medicaid (but not their ACA) to cover illegal immigrants in some circumstances. They are only using state money for that. Now, money is fungible, but that’s typical of many federal programs–our version of federalism allows states to add on their own policy agenda to the federal programs IF the program is written in such a way that allows state divergent. Generally speaking, conservatives have favored greater state freedom, and lighter federal regulation, of jointly administered programs.
So, yeah, it seems like an inaccurate talking point. The issue is not the health care for illegal immigrants. It’s the huge cost of these subsidies. What no one except conservative policy scholars are talking about is how can we be sure the health care costs are justified, either from hospitals or insurers, when the government subsidies are so generous and automatic? Obamacare only works if there are cost-side remedies. There are some, but there probably need to be more. What you subsidize, ironically, gets more expensive, justifying more and more subsidies. Same thing happened with college tuition. As the feds shoveled more money into the sector, administrators realized that they could raise tuition higher and higher, and they could spend on things that would allow them access to more cash and prestige, like stadiums, dorms, health clubs, 4 star dining halls, and every now and then, a professor or two. Also, much like insurance executives, college presidents and their deans and deanlets saw their compensation SKYROCKET. I say all this just to point out that Republicans are RIGHT about subsidies–they distort markets. What we do about health care is very complicated. But…cutting off these premium subsidies suddenly is going to create massive suffering. There are smarter ways to fix the ACA…but don’t expect smart policy from this White House. It’s not their thing. They suck at policy. We’ve been operating on Biden’s budget for most of Trump’s presidency, because he is so so so so terrible at policy, compromise, details. It’s all so boring. Look what happened with the genius idea of 50 year mortgages–no serious White House would let a crazy idea get to the president, unvetted, and no serious president would release the idea, not even half baked. That’s how policy gets done in this catastrophically stupid White House. Expecting them to fix the ACA is like expecting Giraffes to do quantum physics. Remember–Trump’s health care plan is only two to three weeks away–and always will be.
1. Thanks for using the only sort-of unbiased FactChack service out there, JD.
2. I never pay attention to the numbers Trump cites. Does anyone?.
3. I wish there was a source and spinless explanation I could trust on this topic, but I there isn’t.
4. The Democrats flood the Us with illegals, and then insist that we pay to take care of them. It’s fete accompli. No, I don’t want to live in a country where a person in a car accident, bleeding badly, is kept away from care until we establish their citizenship either. But I also don’t want to be forced to pay for services for people who have no business being here.
5. Obamacare was a bad law, and many, many tried to explain what a bad law it was. Now Republicans are being blamed for its failure by the party that passed it. Don’t you think that’s troubling?
ACA did some VERY good things: removed the pre-existing conditions limits and also the game where the insurance company could do cursory checks for them, and then–when you really got expensive–say “you didn’t tell us about your broken leg when you were 5, so no more coverage for your cancer”. Allowed kids to stay on plans till 26. Required that all insurance companies put at least 80% of premiums to, you know, medical costs. Not salaries for executives. Not marketing. Medical costs. And also–created those marketplaces where, along with Medicaid expansion, millions of uninsured people got health insurance. Some for the first time ever. That’s a very good thing. Expensive, true. And if there’s a better plan–make it, Republicans. But they haven’t . Not for two decades almost. I’m open to a market based solution–and I think we could learn MORE from Switzerland, Germany and Taiwan, each of their systems has some good aspects. BUT–until there actually is a Republican plan, the ACA is bulletproof. And as for your final concern–Republicans are in power. It’s their job to fix things, whether they are done by Democrats, the Chinese, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The blame game ends when you take office.
It’s their job to fix things, but the people who caused the problems are estopped from blaming them for the problem. The “affordability” jiu jitsu may be the worst of the current examples.Inflation is permanent. It slows, but the prices never come down overall. Trump, of course, made his bed to a great extent by saying that he would lower prices.
“Did some good things” is a rationalization when the law as a whole hasn’t worked as promised. It’s like “But he built the Autobahn!” And I’m not at all sure that forcing insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions was a solution except for the ones with those conditions. It made everyone’s insurance more expensive. Obama had a mandate to lower health care costs, which meant taking on the healthcare industry. Instead he just made others pay the too high costs.
And regarding the ER services for illegals: that’s fine, but the quid pro quo should be that any illegal who goes to an ER must either prove citizenship OR admit illegal status, with hospitals required by law to contact ICE. If Democrats agree to that, then the GOP should agree to the funding.
Every policy has unforeseen consequences. And often perverse incentives. Let’s think about what would happen if you make hospitals an arm of ICE. Picture a mother and two children, all illegals. The elder child breaks his arm in a car accident. The mother refuses emergency care, because she fears he, or the whole family, will be deported. The child has a broken arm for weeks, untreated, in agony. They end up at some shady unlicensed doc. Or a father refusing emergency care so that he can take care of his children. Similar dilemmas will present themselves with regularity. It’s why local police don’t like, generally, be asked to enforce federal law on immigration. It creates zones of illegality, where robbers know, and potential victims know, that most people won’t call the cops. If you make hospitals and local cops agents of ICE, or schools, you create vast policy problems.
Which is not to say that I favor open borders, although I have libertarian colleagues who do quite eloquently (free movement of capital AND labor!) The real solution is fixing legal immigration simultaneously with creating a longterm, expensive, path to citizenship for those here a while who haven’t broken the law, along with, yes, border security. Legal immigration is broken. It can take 20 years for someone to legally immigrate from Mexico. That’s why they hop the fences. well, one reason, anyway.
I know this sounds heartless, but if the mother decides that living illegally in the US takes priority over the welfare of her child, that’s her unethical choice. Hospitals wouldnt be arms of ICE, they would be avoiding aiding and abetting an illegal act. Give hospitals a choice: they can keep illegals’ secret and pay for their treatment without taxpayer assistance, or they can be good citizens.
It sounds heartless…because it is. It will put hospitals in a terrible ethical dilemma, a whole series of them. And if we follow your advice, and let insurance companies discriminate against those with pre existing conditions again, this will lead to some folks being effectively uninsurable…because of their high consumption of health care. There used to be Republican plans to cover such people (ACA was one of them, modeled after Romney’s MassCare) and the individual mandate was another (A GOP idea from the Clinton years). The other was some insurance pool of high risk/high cost people, but the math never added up on that. Insurance requires the participation of the young and healthy to cover the sick. At some point, we may ask ourselves–what are we actually getting from insurance companies? They spend an inordinate amount of money on cost-pushing, which actually doesn’t reduce costs, it just increases their profit–and the suffering of American families. Most of us, insured or not, die on beds tied up with red tape. The frustration of bureaucracy and cost pushing, and penny pinching, and rationing of health care for profit motives, is there because the more complex the policy, the more profit there is. My dad had three insurances when he was in the 9month walk to death from cancer. He was a meticulous and careful planner. Had I been dying, he would have been able to figure out the bureaucracy as well as anyone. But because he was the one dying, and he was the best of us at such things, several palliative care protocols that would have eased his suffering were not given to him. Because he didn’t think they were covered by any of his plans (Tricare, Medicare, and a supplemental). He’s spent all that money getting extra coverage, and then because of the policy complexity, and all the cost pushing by doctors, hospitals, insurers, and big pharma…he went without something he paid for. Cha Ching! Profit! Everyone in the game has lawyers, accounts, and billers–except you. And so when you are at your worst, watching your loved one die, you face a choice–spend hours on the phone with heartless bureaucrats…hoping to change their ruling…OR…pay out of pocket…OR…let them suffer. We can do better. ACA made the system fairer, and took millions of people from the ranks of the uninsured. It still does. If the Republicans have a better plan, let’s see it. So far…we’ve been waiting since 2009….Nothing.
I forgot the punch line–I found out the last week of his life that this procedure, which involved home visit by a nurse, WAS covered by his supplemental. It’s just that the policies were, together, such a bunch of ridiculous gobbledygook that we didn’t know. But…it was too late. Born in the tail end of the Depression, my dad wouldn’t spend the money on something as frivolous as his comfort. He put up with the pain. If it wasn’t covered, he didn’t need it THAT much.
It’s “heartless” in the same way the Left thinks deporting illegal immigrants is heartless, and imprisoning criminals is heartless. There are consequences, and should be, of illegally going into a nation and expecting to be allowed to stay there. If someone sneaks into my house and secretly lives in my attic, I have no ethical or legal obligation to help him when he runs out and breaks his leg. I call the police. An illegal should know that if he or she is here, no law will require anyone to help them at the nation’s expense. If you are a legal resident, a refugee, etc., you’re entitled to everything a citizen is entitled to.Obviously there are incentives to “invade” the US. We should remove them. It’s not heartless, it’s common sense.
Why saddle insurance companies with paying for pre-existing conditions when that raises everyone’s insurance costs? That’s not insurance. That’s like making casino’s pay off when someone makes a stupid bet and loses. In fact, I would support making casinos pay for the costs of treating pre-existing conditions when some one doesn’t get health insurance. OR the NFL. Or the top wealthiest corporations. Or Taylor Swift. None of them are less liable than the insurance companies should be. Make health insurance mandatory like auto insurance.Take the gamble of not paying for insurance and buying stuff instead, and you, and only you, are accountable for the consequneces.
There’s at least one group where the left has been playing definitional games. I would argue that an illegal alien who is caught, but given temporary protected status, is still an illegal alien. The left chose to call them ‘lawfully present immigrants’. I think that’s orwellian double speak. It lumps a whole bunch of different groups together to imply that TPS changes their immigration status. They are literally proven illegal aliens. It’s a suspended sentence at best.
Meanwhile, as Jack pointed out, we had an effectively unenforced law saying that other illegal aliens couldn’t benefit, Claiming that it’s nominally illegal doesn’t magically make the reality go away.
TPS is a semantic game the way all laws are. What Apple does on its app market isn’t an anti-trust violation, currently, but if you rewrite the regulation, or pass a new law, it very well might be. Or a major court ruling. It may seem like a trick, if you don’t like the result. But this “trick” is out in the open, at least. I’m researching a change in anti-trust regulation that was done in relative secrecy in the Reagan years that has radically reshaped the retail economy for decades. No vote in congress. No articles in the press. The only ones who noticed were corporate elites, who began a five decade destruction of mom and pop retailers. And Trump has shown that when TPS is reversed, those folks become illegal immigrants again. That shows the legal system, at least, is working. Your great grandpappy was legal under a much looser admission system, but if they found socialist materials in his luggage, or typhoid in his throat, he could become illegal in a second.