It’s attention-grabbing which historic issues networks select to cowl and which they don’t. The New York Metropolis trial of former President Donald Trump, for instance, attracts high billing throughout the dial. A no brainer, actually. However for ABC World Information Tonight, the also-historic impeachment and potential Senate trial of Homeland Safety Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is just a bridge too far.
Maybe ABBA and coming into into the Library of Congress and the drafting of Caitlin Clark have been extra newsworthy gadgets for ABC. The likelier story is that, as soon as once more and as within the case of the (associated) border overrun at El Paso, ABC didn’t wish to cowl one thing that will forged the Biden administration in an unfavorable mild. On immigration.
A minimum of the opposite networks pretended to attempt to cowl the story, packaged as tiny briefs inside their Congressional roundups which at the moment centered on a possible Movement to Vacate in opposition to Speaker Mike Johnson over his scheduling of votes on help to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Of those, CBS’s tiny transient was essentially the most complete. Right here it’s, in its entirety as aired on CBS Night Information on Tuesday, April sixteenth, 2024:
SCOTT McFARLANE: In the meantime, Johnson’s Home Republicans try to take away a unique official. Delivering impeachment articles to the Senate at the moment in opposition to Homeland Safety Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
MARK GREEN: …is impeached for top crimes and misdemeanors.
McFARLANE: Arguing he’s willfully and systematically refused to implement immigration legal guidelines, an allegation Mayorkas denied once more at the moment.
ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: I’ve abided by the legislation each step of the way in which.
McFARLANE: Organising a proper continuing tomorrow within the U.S. Senate destined for a lifeless finish.
What are the prospects there’s truly going to be an impeachment trial tomorrow?
THOM THILLIS: Um- I’d say just about none.
McFARLANE: Democrats management the Senate and senators anticipate the debt matter can be shortly shut down with no trial.
PETER WELCH: It’s a bogus motion by the Home. That is the issue.
McFARLANE: The impeachment proceedings are scheduled to start right here tomorrow afternoon, however the Biden administration says your complete endeavor is baseless and a waste of time.
McFarlane’s concept of “steadiness” when masking the Senate trial of Mayorkas was to characteristic bipartisan pooh-pooing of the entire endeavor earlier than working White Home quotes dismissing the entire thing as a “waste of time”.
Over at NBC Nightly Information, a tinier transient, however Congressional Correspondent Ryan Nobles discovered the time to squeeze in a pro-impeachment voice.
RYAN NOBLES: Tonight, a trial within the Senate set to start with Home Republicans formally sending over articles of impeachment in opposition to Homeland Safety Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
TED CRUZ: The Senate has a transparent obligation underneath the Structure and 200 years of precedent. We have to maintain a trial.
NOBLES: Republicans accusing him of willfully refusing to adjust to immigration legal guidelines, with a report 9.3 million migrant border crossings since President Biden took workplace. Mayorkas and Democrats name the costs baseless. Senate Democrats poised to shortly dismiss them.
What about taxpayer-funded PBS, you may ask? Certainly there was time inside its hourlong PBS NewsHour for Mayorkas, proper? Incorrect. However they did make time for this:
GEOFF BENNETT: A Renaissance period landmark in Denmark’s capital went up in flames at the moment. The blaze broke out on the copper roof of Copenhagen’s Previous Inventory Alternate because it was present process renovations forward of its four-hundredth anniversary. The spire of the construction, which is a twisted sphere of 4 dragon’s tails, collapsed within the hearth. And town’s mayor referred to as the constructing an iconic piece of Danish heritage.
As you’ll be able to see, the media have been all over on Mayorkas- from barely masking, to masking however carrying Dem water to not masking in any respect. It’s no surprise we rightly and deservedly name them “regime media”.