Conservative media criticized the budget deal and May Day riots today.

Today in Conservative Media: “Trump Got Rolled” on the Budget

Today in Conservative Media: “Trump Got Rolled” on the Budget

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May 2 2017 5:49 PM

Today in Conservative Media: “Trump Got Rolled” on the Budget

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President Donald Trump.

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A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.

Yesterday’s May Day protests were a top story in conservative media today.  “RIOTS in Portland: May Day Ends in Smoke Bombs, Street Terror, Fires and Multiple Arrests,” Gateway Pundit pronounced. “The Portland Police Department tweeted consistently throughout the demonstrations and each memo they delivered was more frightening than the last,” the post read. Those tweets included mentions of “anarchists” setting fires, destroying a police car, and in one case, “Rocks, lead balls and full cans of @pepsi being launched at police.”

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The Daily Caller also covered the Portland riot, suggesting that it was exemplary of broader political trends in the city. “Portland, a known leftist hotbed, has struggled to contain explosive anti-Trump protests,” the site wrote. National Review saw the violence as a symptom of a larger issue within the left as a whole. “Far-left activists are conspicuously ineffective at containing violent elements, which take control of ostensibly ‘peaceful’ protests with alarming regularity.”

Portland wasn’t the only city where protesters got into trouble. Independent Journal Review discussed the arrest of a “masked Antifa protester” who burned an American flag at a Los Angeles protest. As the site acknowledged, “While it’s not illegal to burn the American flag in protest, police apparently told protesters they can’t start fires in public.” Fox News’ website, meanwhile, featured a slide show promising images of “May Day Anger Around the World,” though many of those images were more celebratory than violent.

A Facebook post from “Conservative Daily” making light of a story about a man driving a pickup truck into a May Day crowd performed well on Facebook:

In other news:

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Conservative commentators continued to vent their rage at the budget deal. Vice President Mike Pence called in to Rush Limbaugh’s radio show and insisted that the bill was a victory for the administration, primarily because it allocated “a $21 billion increase in defense spending.” Limbaugh, who has been sharply critical of the agreement, was unpersuaded, telling the vice president:

If I’m the Democrats, $21 billion, 15 billion for defense that was not originally authorized, that’s a small price to pay for continuing to fund refugee resettlement, continuing to fund Planned Parenthood, continuing to fund sanctuary cities, continuing to fund the EPA, and not build the wall. The Democrats clearly think this is a big win, and they’re confident they can block Trump’s agenda after this spending bill for the rest of Trump’s term. There isn’t anything of the president’s agenda in this budget, and people are beginning to ask, when’s that gonna happen? If you’re gonna shut it down in September, why not now?

“Yeah,” Pence responded, later claiming it wasn’t necessary to wait and “get ‘em next time,” as Limbaugh had put it, because, “We got ’em this time.”

In an appearance on Fox & Friends, Laura Ingraham shared many of Limbaugh’s concerns: “We do not have a Republican party on Capitol Hill that can get its act together. They cannot agree on basic points,” she said.

Though Ingraham’s own criticism focused on the role of Congress—and the unnamed “special interests” that had, she claimed, written the bill—a headline on LifeZette, where she is editor-in-chief, noted that the president himself was in “Damage Control” mode. A Breitbart article on Trump’s defense of the bill spawned thousands of comments from the site’s readers, many of them aggrieved. “Well glad you’re happy with it cuz your base sure isn’t. At least someone is happy,” one wrote. “Just another neocon. What a disappointment,” another complained.

Some Trump friendly sites persisted in blaming Paul Ryan for the bill’s failings, but others were less charitable. In an appearance on Special Report with Bret Baier, Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer was especially frank. “Trump got rolled,” Krauthammer said. “There’s no denying the fact that this was not a win. He was not the winner he said he was—or negotiator. This is a total loss.”