Fox News offered Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) a platform to promote his petition to defund President Obama's health care law, an effort that has been repeatedly pushed by Fox News host Sean Hannity.
On the July 29 edition of Fox News' America Live, guest host Shannon Bream hosted Cruz to promote his petition to defund the Affordable Care Act (ACA). During the interview, Bream praised Cruz's background, saying, “The first time I met you was when you argued a case at the Supreme Court. You seem very familiar with the Constitution.” Cruz appealed to Fox viewers, declaring that “the only way” to stop funding of health care reform is if Americans “go to dontfundit.com, we sign a national petition, and every one of us picks up the phone, calls our elected officials and says, 'Talk is cheap. Stand up, use the constitutional power of the purse and defund Obamacare now.' If we stand together, we can win this fight.”
Bream is not the first Fox News host to hype the right-wing campaign to defund the ACA. On his radio show, Fox News host Sean Hannity has repeatedly threatened Republicans to support defunding, even to the point of threatening primary challenges to those who don't comply. After Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) threatened to shut down the government if the health care law was not defunded, Hannity hosted Lee on his show, saying:
This is an interesting moment -- I think -- and a test for the Republican Party. Are they going to be the conservative alternative? How many members of the House and Senate ran on repealing Obamacare? Now they can vote symbolically or they can take this stand, is what you're telling them to do. I'm supporting you. I think they ought to just put their foot down, stand on principal and stop calculating what political impact is going to be felt here. Fund the rest of the government, but just defund Obamacare. And then if the Democrats want to shut down the government, then let them shut it down.
Cruz's petition is just the most recent effort to defund the ACA, and Fox figures have repeatedly hyped the effort, even when the inevitable consequence is shutting down the government.