During an appearance on Newsmax’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight” on Wednesday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) argued that Tuesday’s midterm elections were “not a fair fight” because of the mainstream media’s bias toward the left.
While Republicans are projected to regain control of the House, the results of the midterms were nowhere close the “red wave” that many were predicting — which Johnson said was “very disappointing.”
The Wisconsin senator, who won reelection by just one point, began the segment by questioning just how bad it has to get before Americans reject Democrats.
Thank you Wisconsin!
I’m proud to represent you for another 6 years. pic.twitter.com/VnM3368QKC
— Ron Johnson (@RonJohnsonWI) November 9, 2022
“How bad do conditions have to get in this country before Democrat voters wake up and realize that their policies and the governance of the Democrat leaders is literally destroying this country,” said Johnson. “I mean, you’ve got 40-year high inflation, record gas prices, skyrocketing crime, open border of flooded deadly drugs: I just call the list of horribles. It doesn’t get much worse than that.”
“And yet Democrats just kind of shrugged it all off,” he added.
Johnson went on to point out that the mainstream media’s consistent efforts to boost Democrat candidates — siding with the left at every turn and often refusing to even interview Republican politicians — has caused there to no longer be a “level playing field” when it comes to elections.
“It’s not a fair fight,” he said. “It’s not a level playing field. We have a mainstream media that, really, they’re not journalists – so many of them are advocates for the left. They don’t interview someone like me. They argue with me.”
While Democrats essentially get free campaign advertisements in the form of praise from the media and softball interviews, Republicans still have to pay for ads to get the message out to their voters, Johnson argued.
“So we, we’ve got the real challenge in terms of getting our message out without having to pay, you know, millions of millions of dollars,” the senator said.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden targeted Johnson during a White House press conference on Wednesday. The Wisconsin senator noted that Biden was “lying” about Johnson’s supposed desire to do away with Social Security and Medicare.
“He’s lying to the American public, but he can lie with impunity because the mainstream media won’t hold him accountable,” Johnson said. “They don’t ask him the tough questions. They haven’t asked him those tough questions during his campaign and really through his presidency, and they certainly didn’t ask my opponent, Mandela Barnes, the tough questions during this campaign.”
Johnson went on to argue that he wants to “save Social Security,” not end it, as Biden claimed — asserting that the program needs to be funded and what is truly putting Social Security and Medicare at risk is the Democrats’ spending.
“The trust fund runs out in 2035,” he said. “Nobody is talking about it. Nobody’s really discussing the fact that, you know, benefits already exceed the payroll tax. Nobody’s talking about what happens when that trust fund runs out.”
“Are we going to have the financial wherewithal to plus up the benefits to match the promises made? Again, these guys that could care less about the truth. They lie through their teeth,” Johnson added.
He then pointed out that the media’s hostility towards him was what put his Senate seat in danger — citing Wisconsin’s 48%-48% split between party registrations and noting that the true battle is for the 4% in the middle. The biased media pushes that 4% toward the Democrats, he argued.
“You’re literally starting an election, battling over about 4% of the electorate and so it’s difficult, and it’s even more difficult for conservatives when you have a very liberal mainstream media, in my case, that literally is trying to politically destroy me for two years prior to the election,” Johnson said.
