A broken clock is right twice a day and former President Bill Clinton was certainly right Monday when he criticized ObamaCare for hurting working people. “…The people are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half,” he remarked at a campaign rally for his wife. The shocking admission by the liberal president went unreported by ABC Tuesday, while CBS and NBC aided in playing it down that evening.
CBS This Morning was the only network morning show to discuss the former president’s comments, but it was only mentioned because Donald Trump’s Campaign Manager Kellyanne Conway brought it up. “And I hope that he brings up ObamaCare — because we have none other than President Bill Clinton yesterday being highly critical of ObamaCare — it's failures. He says it's a terrible thing for small businesses,” she stated while talking about potential debate topics.
The network did willingly report the comments later that evening, but it was mostly making light of them and played defense for the Clinton campaign. “Well, campaigning yesterday, Bill Clinton inadvertently handed ammunition to his wife's opponent,” joked Anchor Scott Pelley. During Major Garrett’s report little was said in regard to the veracity of Bill’s comments, giving only 49 seconds to the issue before delving into Trump’s tax controversy for 1 minute, 37 seconds.
NBC didn’t report it during their morning show Today, but were more than happy to aide in playing it down that evening. On NBC Nightly News, reporter Andrea Mitchell kept the news brief during her report, noting, “But Clinton's husband, less helpful when he criticized ObamaCare.” Mitchell went on to play a clip of Clinton’s Campaign Chair John Podesta’s spin of the comments. “President Obama has talked about that, that ObamaCare needs to be improved. It doesn't need to be sacked and scrapped,” Podesta stated.
The “Big Three” networks’ reluctance to cover Bill Clinton’s criticisms of the program was an extension of their covering up of ObamaCare’s failures. At the end of August 2016, the Media Research Center documented how the combined time of ObamaCare coverage for the year was 2 minutes, 18 seconds, even though numerous healthcare providers announced they were pulling out of the state healthcare exchanges.