Like many a liberal blowhard, Fox’s Geraldo Rivera grabbed estimates from financial analysts that the government shutdown cost the economy billions of dollars. On his radio show Thursday, Geraldo decided he wanted to send the entire bill to Sen. Ted Cruz.
Geraldo also hosted CNN anchor Don Lemon who claimed to disavow “any political affiliation,” and then trashed the Republicans for holding “the American people hostage,” which is “not the American way”:
GERALDO RIVERA: I wanna start this morning by demanding my $70 from Ted Cruz, Sen. Ted Cruz. That's what we're estimating the smug -- smart, admittedly, smart but selfish junior senator from Texas cost each and every American, seventy bucks, that's what the government shutdown cost us, that's what the debt crisis cost us, and if he's not gonna pay us individually, then I'm urging the treasury of the United States to send him a bill for 23, 24 billion dollars, because that's what Standard and Poor's and other analysts are saying that the Cruz ego trip, shutting down the government, cost the economy....
And from a politically, a purely political point of view, as a Republican, this whole circus with the government shutdown, the international tumult inflicted on the world by the debt-ceiling crisis, it allowed the president of the United States, Barack Obama, to escape criticism for the disastrous debut of his signature health-care [program].
The criticism of Obamacare is catching up. Then the CNN weekend anchor wound up to bash Republicans:
DON LEMON : I am not a Democrat, nor am I a Republican. I'm an independent. I -- when I became a journalist, I disavowed any political affiliation, but you cannot -- the people who are responsible for shutting the government down was the Republican party and the small faction in the Republican party, Tea Party Republicans....
You cannot hold the American people hostage, and the economy hostage, because you're not getting your way. That's not the American way, and just because a small number of people voted for you in your districts back home does not mean that you carry sway and you speak for the broad swath of American people.
Lemon wasn't asked if that critique applies or doesn't apply to the Congressional Black Caucus, or leftist Democrats in majority-Asian or majority-Latino congressional districts.
