{"id":2228852,"date":"2024-04-24T07:16:02","date_gmt":"2024-04-24T11:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/media-spin-ridiculously-false-tale-of-johnsons-ukraine-compromise\/"},"modified":"2024-04-24T07:22:22","modified_gmt":"2024-04-24T11:22:22","slug":"media-spin-ridiculously-false-tale-of-johnsons-ukraine-compromise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/media-spin-ridiculously-false-tale-of-johnsons-ukraine-compromise\/","title":{"rendered":"Misleading Media Coverage of Johnson&#8217;s Ukraine &#8216;Compromise"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fmedia-spin-ridiculously-false-tale-of-johnsons-ukraine-compromise%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2228852&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The article criticizes media \u200dfor biased reporting on \u200drecent\u2062 political events, highlighting conservative resistance to unfavorable\u2062 policies.\u200b It questions the leadership&#8217;s decisions, portraying them as disconnected from constituents&#8217; desires. The narrative sheds light \u200don the complexities of border security, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/congressional-republicans-call-on-biden-administration-to-act-swiftly-on-ethiopia-crisis\/\" title=\"Congressional Republicans Call on Biden Administration to Act Swiftly on Ethiopia Crisis\">foreign aid<\/a>, and Ukraine funding issues.\u200c The conflicting viewpoints among politicians and public\u2064 sentiment add depth to the analysis.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<p><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><\/p>\n<div class=\"article-content\">\n<p>Journalists are uncritically spreading the talking points of House and Senate leadership, insisting foolish conservative hardliners thwarted a border deal that left them with nothing in return when Speaker Johnson finally passed a package of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/senate-gop-pushes-back-on-democrats-criticism-amid-border-talks-stalemate\/\" title=\"Senate Republicans respond to Democrats' criticism amidst border talks deadlock\">foreign aid bills<\/a> last week. This is convenient for the Beltway, but it\u2019s absurd to cast conservatives as hapless rubes and partisan hacks for rejecting unpopular policies designed to undercut the will of their constituents. <\/p>\n<p>Their option was to take a terrible deal and pretend it was great, or push for something \u2014 anything \u2014 to meet the basic and reasonable will of their voters. Johnson decided to demand the former of his conference. <\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2-long d-flex justify-content-center\" style=\"margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center; \" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-1658390292\">\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1379703300879-0\" class=\"mb-30\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-6d7a67aa25099c56f91d3eb9c168dd93 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-6d7a67aa25099c56f91d3eb9c168dd93\"><\/div>\n<p>Take this post from Sahil Kapur of NBC News. Purporting to report \u201cHOW IT HAPPENED,\u201d Kapur claims Democrats \u201ccave[d]\u201d by working on a border deal with Sen. James Lankford and that Republicans rejected it because former President Trump wants to run on the border crisis. This is not remotely neutral reporting, but it\u2019s also not accurate. <\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"> <span class=\"fWq\"><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">HOW IT HAPPENED<\/p>\n<p>1. Rs say no foreign aid without border security<\/p>\n<p>2. Ds say nope<\/p>\n<p>3. Rs say then no aid<\/p>\n<p>4. Ds cave, cut a deal for tougher border laws with Lankford and McConnell<\/p>\n<p>5. Trump tells them to kill it<\/p>\n<p>6. Rs kill it<\/p>\n<p>7. Rs pass foreign aid without the border security<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/sahilkapur\/status\/1782411353614938226?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 22, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/span> <\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Democrats made some small concessions in the Lankford-Schumer deal, but the legislation was peppered intentionally with exemptions to those concessions, ultimately allowing President Biden to continue with business as usual at the border. Even if Trump did say the bill needed to be killed for the sake of his election, Freedom Caucus members and their allies would have rejected the bill. If Trump had told them to support it, they still would have rejected it. (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2024\/mar\/8\/brandon-judd-border-patrol-union-chief-says-biden-\/\">Here\u2019s<\/a> why you also shouldn\u2019t buy the popular argument that the bill must have been tough because the Border Patrol union supported it.)<\/p>\n<p>A bill that allowed for thousands of people to pour into the U.S. every day, if properly reported on by the press, would not be supported by the public, let alone the constituents of Republican members elected to be \u201crepresentative\u201d of their desires. Democrats did not \u201ccave,\u201d Republican leadership did. <\/p>\n<p>This is also true of Ukraine funding. In The New York Times, GOP consultant Brendan Buck <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/04\/22\/opinion\/mike-johnson-ukraine-mtg.html\">argued<\/a> the Freedom Caucus is counterproductively undermining its fellow conservatives. Buck, an aide to previous Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan, wrote, \u201cIn the past year, the House has averted a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/biggest-fear-among-us-business-leaders-is-catastrophic-debt-default-white-house-economic-adviser\/\" title=\"US business leaders' biggest fear is a catastrophic debt default, according to a White House economic adviser.\">catastrophic debt default<\/a>, passed foreign military aid when it seemed hopeless and funded the government when a shutdown seemed all but inevitable. Should we expect more from Congress? Of course. But the critical items are getting done in a more bipartisan manner than would seem possible in this era of negative partisanship.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-35bc548f245c96738f152951b3ef3487 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-6\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-35bc548f245c96738f152951b3ef3487\"><\/div>\n<p>Republican voters did not support any of this. Buck is celebrating the establishment\u2019s decision to ignore the will of their constituents. Kapur, for his part, is swallowing whole cloth leadership\u2019s spin meant to fool voters into thinking they did their best. That\u2019s a perfectly fine argument for Mike Johnson\u2019s office to make, but it\u2019s not true, and it\u2019s certainly not a neutral rendering of the process. It\u2019s propaganda. <\/p>\n<p>Johnson, for instance, could have held the line to make Democrats blink on Ukraine funding and a serious border bill, as he said he would do. (Or on FISA reauthorization!) He could have pushed to the brink of a shutdown. He could have lent moral support to the members of his conference who were representing the perfectly reasonable and constitutionally valid views of their constituents. Instead, he walked back his previous positions and fell in line. He opened fire on HFC and its allies. <\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s entirely true, as Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2024\/04\/22\/trump-defends-johnson-rips-prosecution-interview-00153749\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">argued<\/a>, that Johnson has a slim majority, a Democratic Senate, and very little leverage. It\u2019s true threatening a shutdown never goes well for Republicans nationally (partially because of the hostile media). It\u2019s true this may all have turned out the same. But amid a surge of pressures from media and powerful interests, Johnson barely tried to get more, and that\u2019s why Republicans are upset. <\/p>\n<p>Trump, for his part, should consider that when Buck and Republicans held the House, Senate, and presidency, they failed even to \u201crepeal and replace\u201d the legislation GOP candidates ran on eliminating for a decade. They failed to get our taxes onto a <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/SpeakerRyan\/status\/856977012573057024\">postcard<\/a>. Democrats, with only the House, impeached Trump in 2019.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-fe7636b344c38781a0096f59889be76a fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-10\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-fe7636b344c38781a0096f59889be76a\"><\/div>\n<p>On the speaker\u2019s Ukraine aid victory, Buck added, \u201cAs a result, Mr. Johnson now waits for Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the anti-Ukraine Freedom Caucus member from Georgia, to follow through on threats to force a vote to remove him from the speakership.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s remarkable that neither Buck nor The New York Times realizes Greene is very publicly not a member of the Freedom Caucus, nor is Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who\u2019s alluded to in the piece\u2019s condemnation of conservatives on the Rules Committee. Journalists, consultants, and lobbyists instinctively view populist lawmakers and voters as unserious and unreasonable, so they simply believe what they\u2019re told by their friends on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n<p>The result is a false history, one that benefits powerbrokers at the expense of the broader public. Leadership is always made up of the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.racket.news\/p\/americas-adults-in-the-room-are-revolting?utm_campaign=email-post&#038;r=2xssg&#038;utm_source=substack&#038;utm_medium=email\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"> \u201cadults in the room.\u201d<\/a> The members who try to hit pause \u2014 for good causes and bad ones \u2014 are necessarily clowns, even if the public is on their side and even by the self-appointed guardians of \u201cdemocracy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Polling on Ukraine is all over the map, but it\u2019s increasingly clear a majority of Republican voters believe the U.S. is spending too much on the conflict. Here\u2019s a Gallup <a href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/poll\/643601\/americans-say-not-helping-ukraine-enough.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">poll<\/a> from two weeks ago and a CBS <a href=\"https:\/\/ny1.com\/nyc\/all-boroughs\/politics\/2024\/04\/15\/majority-of-americans-support-sending-aid-to-ukraine--poll-says\">poll<\/a> from April 15. The Associated Press <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/israel-russia-ukraine-american-war-94404b3269a1effc8d94482a36387657\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">found<\/a> similar results last month. All the way back in November, Fox News <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/official-polls\/fox-news-poll-support-helping-ukraine-fading\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">found<\/a> only 35 percent of Republicans supported continuing aid to Ukraine. <\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heritage.org\/press\/new-poll-battleground-states-reveals-ukraine-fatigue-border-security-top-priority\">poll<\/a> of swing-state voters conducted this month by the Heritage Foundation and RMG Research <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2024\/04\/16\/poll-voters-say-stopping-bidens-border-invasion-is-more-important-than-funding-ukraine\/\">found<\/a> \u201cthree-quarters of all moderate Americans in swing states would oppose a proposal that sent more funding to Ukraine and did not include funding to secure the southern border,\u201d a \u201cmajority of moderates (56%) think the $113 billion the U.S. has already spent helping Ukraine is too much, and \u201ca similar proportion (54%) think the U.S. should spend more to secure the southern border than help Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s just a poll of moderates in swing states, not even hardcore Republicans in red states and districts represented by many of Congress\u2019s populists. A CNN poll ahead of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/we-have-to-de-weaponize-manchin-chides-schumer-for-hammering-republicans-after-debt-ceiling-vote\/\" title=\"\u2018We Have To De-Weaponize\u2019: Manchin Chides Schumer For Hammering Republicans After Debt Ceiling Vote\">debt ceiling deal<\/a> last May <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2023\/05\/23\/politics\/cnn-poll-debt-ceiling-increase-spending-cuts\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">found<\/a>, \u201cAmong Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, a matching 73% say they are more concerned that Republicans will give up too much and government spending will continue at its current level than that Republicans will fail to compromise and the government will not be able to pay its existing debts, with 27% more concerned about default.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A Yahoo\/YouGov poll in March <a href=\"https:\/\/d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net\/documents\/20240311_yahoo_combined.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">found<\/a> high levels of support for the Lankford-Schumer bill, but only when presented with an egregiously biased description of it, as Andrew R. Arthur <a href=\"https:\/\/cis.org\/Arthur\/Poll-Nobodys-Talking-About-Should-Be\">explained<\/a> at <a href=\"https:\/\/cis.org\/Arthur\/Good-and-Lot-Bad-Senate-Border-Deal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">length<\/a>. <\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>Echoing Buck, McConnell openly <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/AndrewDesiderio\/status\/1782849720656056591\">admitted<\/a> on Tuesday to ignoring most of his conference on key votes because if he didn\u2019t, \u201c[W]e wouldn\u2019t raise the debt ceiling and we wouldn\u2019t fund the government,\u201d he told reporters. The Senate is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/ahead-of-womens-march-feminists-liberals-lgbtq-persons-to-announce-new-pro-life-group\/\" title=\"Ahead Of Women\u2019s March, Feminists, Liberals, LGBTQ Persons To Announce New Pro-Life Group\">inherently anti-democratic<\/a>, as the founders intended, and McConnell takes comfort in this. Even so, this is no defense for Johnson or the press corps. <\/p>\n<p>If McConnell insists on sharing more in common on key topics with Democrats than his GOP colleagues and their constituents, he\u2019s welcome to enjoy some short-lived plaudits from the highly compensated chattering class. But when senators like Mike Lee and J.D. Vance try to throw a wrench in the well-oiled Beltway machine \u2014 as their colleagues in the House did \u2014 it\u2019s propaganda for the media to carry on as though silly Republican ideologues are doing Putin\u2019s bidding or taking vapid stances for the sake of pleasing an unreasonably inflexible base.<\/p>\n<p>To the extent HFC and other House conservatives deserve the blame, it\u2019s probably true Kevin McCarthy would have gotten a slightly better deal at the end of the day, given his defter ability to navigate the dynamics of his own conference. Publicly, McCarthy was also much more sympathetic to his right flank, which is somewhat remarkable given that Johnson was previously accused of being too close with the HFC. <\/p>\n<p>Regardless, the bipartisan coalition of centrists was always going to either force Republicans into a shutdown or force Republicans to cave. The fault lies not with conservatives, who are more in line with their voters, but with GOP centrists and recalcitrant Democrats who can afford not to come to the table meaningfully on anything precisely because they know they can broker nonsense compromise bills and downplay the border crisis, and the media will obediently regurgitate their spin. <\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-9efadac95e3a295b4b6f022abf8e6c27 fdrlst__b89e9-after-post-content\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-9efadac95e3a295b4b6f022abf8e6c27\"><\/div>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\">    \t\t\t\t\t   \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Media blindly echoes House and Senate leaders&#8217; claims that conservative hardliners blocked a border deal, portray them as naive, despite securing no benefits, when Speaker Johnson recently approved foreign aid bills. This narrative favors the Beltway, but inaccurately paints conservatives as gullible<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":554,"featured_media":2228853,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Wordpress-Header-1200-%C3%97-900-px.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2228852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Wordpress-Header-1200-%C3%97-900-px.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2228852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/554"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2228852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2228852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2228853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2228852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2228852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2228852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}