The "big, ugly, disgusting abomination" is more than just a passed bill

"Nonpartisan journalism" takes two divergent paths. One travels the high road of political coverage, showing no favor to either major party. The other runs in and along the gutter of gullibility, going out of its way to prove its nonpartisanship by watering down the raw sewage gushing from either party.

The second path is worse than just bad journalism. It's misleading to the point of disinformation. You know this already, but it begs the occasional reminder, accompanied by specific examples.

The Republican Party is the megascale majority shareholder of American politics' industrial cloaca plants. The party's powerful stench is pervasive, impossible to miss, although millions of voters either hold their noses against its miasma or shut their eyes to its excrementitious outpourings and proceed to pull levers marked R.

Assisting their voluntary recklessness and forced naiveté is the too common practice of fussbucket nonpartisan reporting. This morning it appeared in rapid succession as I was reading about "holdout" Freedom Caucusers' theatrical production of Shakespearean sound and fury over — forsooth, zounds! — the BBB's deficits! caused in part because the bill "allows undocumented immigrants to receive Medicaid."

But that's not the fussbucketing part. According to a couple of news reports, it "seems" the Freedom Crazies' fellow, forever-deficit-ballooning "moderate" Republicans met with Trump as well, who "still doesn’t seem to have a firm grasp about what his signature legislative achievement does"; and again, Trump "seemed to believe the lie that the bill doesn’t cut Medicaid."

It seems and seemed that way because that, factually, is what he told them. Said "three sources with direct knowledge of the comments," the convicted felon "told [the moderates] at this meeting that there are three things Congress shouldn’t touch if they want to win elections:" two are Medicare and Social Security, the other is Medicaid.

"But we're touching Medicaid in this bill," replied one.

Anyone believe Trump didn't know that? Is it too shocking for well-mannered journalists to report that a lifelong swindler who illegally snookered banks by submitting fraudulent asset documents would again tell a lie? To again get what he wants? Trump didn't seem to "believe the lie" about Medicaid funding. He said it outright, according to "three sources with direct knowledge of [his] comments." So guys, cut the "seems" bullshit and write it up that way.

Moreover, only Trump would perpetuate a myth about Medicaid via an "article" on his official website titled — what else? — "MYTHBUSTER." Addressing the unfairly maligned BBB, he asserts that the bill guarantees that "Medicaid will be strengthened for the American citizens for whom the program was designed... by removing at least 1.4 million illegal immigrants from the program."

That would be quite a trick, since "illegal immigrants' are ineligible for the program. Yet "about half or more of U.S. adults" say they're "unsure or incorrectly believe that most immigrants to the U.S. are eligible to enroll in federal health insurance programs, including Medicaid, as soon as they arrive to the U.S." From a Kaiser Family Foundation opinion survey. Such ignorant adults are of course Trump's target market; correcting a racist, opportunistic fallacy would never even occur to him.

(Federal law does mandate "that all individuals, regardless of immigration or insurance status, have a right to receive emergency medical care in the U.S. ... to prevent death, serious harm or disability." Manly BBB supporters dislike the pissy-pants requirement very much, and they positively hate states that independently pay for immigrants' medical care. Thus the bill reduces their federal matching rate from 90% to 80% — even though the care is funded entirely by the states.)

This morning on the House floor — before the axe, another axe, fell on America — Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries rose to relabel the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as Republicans' "disgusting abomination" of a "one big ugly bill." With a fascist demagogue and professional confidence man bamboozling the heedless throngs as their Dear Leader, it's Republicans who get uglier every extraordinarily horrendous day — which makes nonpartisan journalism a coconspirator.