MSNBC Contributor Claims Media ‘Bends Over Backwards to Kowtow to the Right,’ Scared of Being Called ‘Liberal’

Donald Trump and Republicans regularly target news outlets like MSNBC and CNN over bias against them, but MSNBC contributor Brian Tyler Cohen made the exact opposite argument on Tuesday.

Tyler, host of the podcast No Lie, joined Morning Joe on Tuesday to discuss his new book Shameless where Cohen argues the Republican Party is running a “long con” and “gaslighting” voters on their actual values.

Cohen argued that Republicans rely on “branding” as a party strong on family values and issues like the southern border, but their actions don’t line up, citing some opposition to IVF on the right as well as conservative lawmakers killing President Joe Biden’s bipartisan border bill last year.

“For all of their policies, they rely on their branding to give themselves cover to act in a way that’s, again, completely opposite to that,” Cohen said.

Cohen cited the border bill and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as examples where Republicans “changed midstream.” On McConnell, the Senate leader opposed former President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, explaining at the time it was because it was an election year and the voters should decide who nominates the next Supreme Court. It was in 2019 that McConnell flipped this position and supported Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination process during another election year. She was confirmed by the Senate in 2020.

According to Cohen, part of the problem is a media scared to be labeled as “liberal.”

The media, he claimed, is too “both sides” on issues.

“What I call the ‘both-sides media’ in this book has given them cover to act this way. It’s in large part how the media has allowed them to — given them a permission structure to act this way just because they don’t want to be labeled as the liberal media, so they’ll bend over backwards to kowtow to the right and basically act as their assignment editors,” Cohen said.

Watch above via MSNBC.

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