Sinclair “must run” segment lets Trump official mislead about health care coverage
Published
Conservative local TV giant Sinclair Broadcast Group’s chief political analyst, former President Donald Trump aide Boris Epshteyn, has begun interviewing administration officials for his “must-run” commentary segments airing on local newscasts across the country. In his latest interview, with Small Business Administration (SBA) head Linda McMahon, Epshteyn allowed McMahon to paint the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as a burden to small businesses. McMahon claimed that “the health care plan that exists just has really had an incredible, devastating effect on small businesses” and that, before the ACA, “employees had a pretty good plan, a reasonable plan. Now they have nothing.”
In fact, more than 95 percent of businesses don’t face a health insurance mandate under the ACA, and the law also offers generous tax credits to help small businesses that don’t have an insurance requirement provide health insurance to their employees regardless. Also contrary to McMahon’s claims, a disproportionate share of uninsured workers prior to the ACA’s enactment were small-business owners and their employees; the year the ACA was enacted, one in five people who enrolled in ACA plans were small-business owners, self-employed, or both.
Epshteyn failed to challenge McMahon with any of these facts in his interview, or to note that the GOP’s recent efforts to destabilize the ACA have already hurt small businesses. Rather than inform the public, Epshteyn’s interview allowed a Trump administration official to push flawed, unchallenged talking points disguised as straight news -- more evidence that these mandated local news segments are basically Trump TV.
The exchange, as aired by Sinclair-operated Charleston, WV, station WVAH on its September 19 edition of Eyewitness News at 10: