ABC’s Christiane Amanpour, on Sunday’s This Week, hit House Speaker John Boehner repeatedly from the left to raise taxes, a hostile approach she failed to apply a month earlier to the House’s top Democrat, Nancy Pelosi.
Amanpour demanded of Boehner: “Do you not feel that by opposing” a tax hike on millionaires to pay for Obama’s jobs bill “you’re basically out of step with the American people on this issue?” She followed by yearning: “Do you agree at all that there should be any kind of tax increases?”
She soon lectured him – “you talk about fairness” – but since “one in 15 Americans live in extreme poverty which is defined as something like $11,000 per year for a family of four [actually, it’s $22,000], are you concerned that these budget cuts are going to hurt the people who can least afford it?”
When Boehner cited how “a rising tide lifting all boats,” Amanpour countered with how income mobility “is kind of slowing down” and, as if she and her journalistic colleagues have nothing to do with it, she contended that “clearly the Republicans are being portrayed as the party that doesn’t really care and are really quote, unquote, ‘the servants of the rich.’”
She inadvertently sety Boehner up to undermine her defense of President Obama’s anti-wealth rhetoric:
"It’s not so much redistribution of income that the President is talking about, much more a shared and much fairer sense of sacrifice. And there doesn’t seem to be the sense amongst people here that the sacrifice is being shared because they point to taxes and tax cuts and who it benefits and who it doesn’t."
Boehner retorted: “Come on, the top one percent pay 38 percent of the income taxes in America. How much more do you want them to pay?”
More in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.