A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.
On Wednesday, the Trump administration released a proposed budget, featuring billions of dollars in cuts to a wide range of agencies, including the EPA, the Department of Education, and the State Department. Most conservative media outlets responded positively to the plan, suggesting that it marked a necessary and valuable effort to fight government waste. The Federalist, for example, wrote, “The blueprint, in fact, is less of a budgeting document than a plan to begin rolling back some of the worst excesses of the bureaucratic state.”
Fox News offered its list of winners and losers. In a representative section on cuts to the Department of Labor, it wrote, “The budget reduces funding for ineffective or duplicative job training grants and focuses Bureau of International Labor Affairs on ensuring that ‘U.S. trade agreements are fair for American workers.’” In its own news post, Breitbart likewise embraced the administration’s own language, characterizing the proposal as “an effort to prioritize safety and security for the American people while dramatically cutting other agencies considered sacred cows by the left.”
On his radio program, Glenn Beck read through a list of some of the proposed cuts, offering commentary along the way:
The African Development Foundation. Why are we developing Africa? The Appalachian Regional Commission? What does this commission do in Appalachia? The Chemical Safety Board. That’s the only one with a name that I thought, Mmm, maybe we should look at that one.
Beck concluded the segment by saying, “I am so pro-Trump right now.”
Some outlets were especially enthusiastic about cuts to the EPA. Gateway Pundit, for example, wrote that Trump’s plan “will cut funding to over-funded government departments such as the EPA.” Elaborating on this, Breitbart praised the plan’s “elimination of funding for implementing the ‘Clean Power Plan,’” and wrote that “cutting the EPA staff by 20% may also benefit the American economy if it forces the EPA to backdown from its aggressive regulatory and enforcement agenda.”
Arts spending was also a popular topic. In “Trump’s Budget Would Finally Fire Big Bird, Defund NPR,” the Daily Caller wrote, “Congress has the final say over all discretionary budgets, so Trump faces a tough fight to get rid of agencies like the NEA and the NEH, even though many Republicans don’t believe the federal government needs to fund arts projects, especially those seen as subversive or frivolous.”
In other news:
Several conservative publications covered a congressional spat between two Republican senators who have opposed elements of the president’s platform. As the Daily Caller reported, “Arizona Sen. John McCain said Wednesday that Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is ‘working’ for Russian President Vladimir Putin, after Paul blocked the ratification of a treaty that would enable Montenegro to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.” On Thursday, a Breitbart headline captured Paul’s response: “Rand Paul Fires Back at John McCain: ‘Past His Prime,’ ‘A Little Bit Unhinged.’”
The Daily Caller also ran an editorial about McCain in which Roger Stone, the publication’s men’s fashion editor, derided the senator for claiming that Stone too was working on behalf of Russia. Stone wrote, “Senator John McCain is acting more like Senator Joe McCarthy. He is making wild and baseless charges. He is acting with reckless disregard for the facts in some kind of new McCarthyism.”
Meanwhile, after a federal judge in Hawaii blocked Trump’s revised travel ban, skeptical posts spread from conservative Facebook pages:
