Fox and Trump claim Democrats have no legislative accomplishments. The House has passed over 150 bills.

Fox isn't telling viewers that the Republican-controlled Senate is doing nothing

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published


Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

In response to congressional investigations into possible irregularities in President Donald Trump’s finances, Fox News and the president are asserting that by pursuing these investigations, House Democrats are ignoring other legislative work. However, the House of Representatives has already passed more than 150 bills since the Democrats took control of it after the 2018 midterm elections.

This morning, Trump wrote on Twitter, “The Democrats have become known as THE DO NOTHING PARTY.” The co-host of the president’s favorite morning show Fox & Friends had already made a similar assertion earlier.

Co-host Brian Kilmeade said that House Democrats blew their chance to be “actually getting something done since they took power in 2018 after their election. They’ve gotten nothing done. All they’ve done is investigate and the president’s pushed back on all of that.” He added that Trump offered House Democrats “a choice: You either legislate or investigate. It seems as though they’re choosing investigate.”

Later in the show, Kilmeade repeated this narrative, saying “[Rep.] Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is in danger of having that House for two years and doing absolutely nothing,” asking, “What are her accomplishments?” On America’s Newsroom, co-anchor Sandra Smith claimed there is “nothing getting done in Congress.” And yesterday morning, Fox Business host Stuart Varney dedicated his show’s monologue to ranting that House Democrats’ investigations of Trump and his administration means “nothing gets done,” complaining that “the politics of destroying the Trump presidency means no legislative action on the pressing issues that face our country.”

These assertions are false. It was Trump who walked out of a meeting with Democrats on infrastructure legislation, as he did before during a January 9 meeting with Democrats who were there to negotiate an end to Trump’s government shutdown. It was Trump who has withheld his approval of a disaster relief bills passed by House Democrats, and it was the Republican-controlled Senate that rejected them. And it was House Democrats who passed a sweeping voting rights, elections, and ethics bill in March. In fact, since Democrats took control of the House of Representatives on January 3, the House has passed more than 150 bills.