Candidate Donald Trump recently released his tax plan and the media were all over it. However, CBS seemed to suffer a case of amnesia between two broadcasts on its network.
During the morning of Sept. 28, CBS found support for the plan, but by evening (when far more people were watching), CBS seemed to have forgotten all about it.
On CBS This Morning, Chief White House Correspondent Major Garrett included tax expert Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, who praised Trump’s tax plan. Norquist said, “This is pro-growth ... and fits comfortably within the parameters [of ATR’s policy].”
“If you have strong growth then without raising taxes you can afford more things,” Norquist said of the revenue generating capabilities of the tax plan. “If we’d grown at the same rate that we did under Reagan’s recovery there’d be 12 million more Americans at work. If there were 12 million more Americans at work paying taxes today, the government would have more money.
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On CBS’s 60 Minutes, Trump defended the proposal on that point in particular saying, “overall it’s going to be a tremendous incentive to grow the economy and we’re gonna take in the same, or more, money.”
However the Sept. 28, CBS Evening News aired another segment by Garrett but took a very different approach. Garrett was shown asking Trump, “How would you address the Democratic arguments, now three decades old, that we’ve tried supply-side, it created higher deficits and it aggravates income inequality?”
No experts were included in that segment, even though CBS had certainly interviewed at least one tax expert. Ignoring Norquist and any other experts CBS might have spoken to, Garrett said, “[t]ax experts we talked to said Trump’s plan lacks specifics on new sources of revenues, [making it] very difficult to calculate whether this plan will make America’s debt and deficit situation better, or worse.”
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By the following broadcast of Evening News, CBS was portraying a liberal tax groups as non-partisan and using its viewpoint to slam the Trump tax plan.
