MSNBC walked in lockstep with the Koch brothers in support of a recent Florida policy to drug-test welfare recipients, according to Rachel Maddow’s train of logic.
Last week, Maddow offered a convoluted, and inaccurate, rant that accused the Koch brothers of pushing the Florida drug-testing law through a group called the Florida Foundation for Government Accountability (FFGA). The Kochs have contributed a relatively small amount of money ($40,000) over the years to the State Policy Network, a trade association of think tanks that counts FFGA as a member. But FFGA doesn’t receive from the State Policy Network, and the Koch brothers say they weren’t even aware of the group. Maddow claimed that the connection nonetheless could pin the law on the fraternal philanthropists’ influence.
When Koch representatives requested a correction, the defiant Maddow claimed she always owns up to errors, but wouldn’t admit this one: “The Koch brothers’ lawyers are not denying that they fund these networks or that the Florida Foundation for Government Accountability is one of the groups that has been funded through these networks,” she said on a later show — when the latter was in fact one of her mistakes, aside from the generally misleading nature of the broadcast.
How misleading? If we were to accept Maddow’s logic, Powerline’s John Hinderaker points out, MSNBC is also behind the drug-testing law, through its parent company Comcast. Comcast, who pays Maddow $7 million a year, is also a contributor to the State Policy Network.
“So in her Thursday broadcast, Maddow could equally well have said that MSNBC ‘ha[s] been promoting forced drug tests for people on welfare,’ and that FFGA is an ‘MSNBC-affiliated group,’” Hinderaker writes.
Be sure to read the entirety of Hinderaker’s takedown of Maddow, and her failed takedown of the Kochs, here.