ABC’s This Week host — and longtime Clinton loyalist — George Stephanopoulos was squirming like a rotisserie chicken on Sunday as he tried desperately to avoid discussing the Schumer Shutdown during his interview with Vice President J.D. Vance.
Instead of addressing Democrats’ role in the crisis, the veteran Democrat propagandist and spin doctor danced around the issue, proving once again that the corporate media will twist itself into knots to protect its own.
You’d think a full-blown government shutdown would be front and center for Stephanopoulos — but instead, the aging Clinton-world operative danced around it as if the crisis were just a minor inconvenience. With the administration refusing to back down and seemingly using the lack of appropriations as cover to trim the federal workforce, Stephanopoulos appeared determined to steer the conversation anywhere else.
He kicked things off with a bizarre claim that U.S. troops would be “peacekeepers” in Gaza, then quickly pivoted to National Guard deployments and the weak pushback from a federal judge and Illinois’s perpetually aggrieved governor, J.B. Pritzker.
When that fizzled, he tried to draw false equivalencies — equating a federal grand jury indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James with a fringe ProPublica piece (which Vance rightly labeled a “left-wing blog”) targeting Republicans.
By the time Stephanopoulos tried to close with a flimsy story about Border Czar Tom Homan supposedly pocketing $50,000 to broker deals with people who were alleged to be FBI agents, it was clear he was grasping at straws. Vance wasn’t having any of it — and Stephanopoulos ended up looking less like a hard-hitting journalist and more like a desperate spin artist protecting the party line.
Here’s how it went before Little George rudely cut off the vice president of the United States:
VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: I don’t know what tape you’re referring to, George. I saw media reports that Tom Homan accepted a bribe. There’s no evidence of that. And here’s George, why fewer and fewer people watch your program and why you’re losing credibility: because you’re talking for now, five minutes with the Vice President of United States about this story regarding Tom Homan, a story that I’ve read about, but I don’t even know the video that you’re talking about. Meanwhile, low income women can’t get food because the Democrats and Chuck Schumer have shut down the government. Right now, we’re trying to figure out how to pay our troops because Chuck Schumer has shut down the government.
You are focused on a bogus story. You’re insinuating criminal wrongdoing against a guy who has done nothing wrong instead of focusing on the fact that our country is struggling because our government is shut down. Let’s talk about the real issues, George. I think the American people would benefit much more from that than from you going down some weird left-wing rabbit hole where the facts clearly show that Tom Homan didn’t engage in any criminal wrongdoing.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: It’s not a weird left-wing rabbit hole. I didn’t insinuate anything. I asked you whether Tom Homan accepted $50,000, as was heard on an audiotape recorded by the FBI in September 2024. And you did not answer the question. Thank you for your time this morning.
It should be noted that a) no charges were ever filed against Homan; and b) President Trump would not retain him if he had done something nefarious as Stephanopoulos suggested.
If you still wondered whether you could hate the mainstream media enough, the answer is, obviously, you can’t.