“Thirteen all-white males in the back room” are drafting federal health care and insurance policy, CNN’s Bakari Sellers said on Sunday’s State of the Union, lamenting the racial and sex composition of certain Republican legislators.
“The Republican party right now is trying to take away health insurance from 23 million people and they are literally drafting up a piece of legislation that affects one-sixth of our economy under the cover of darkness, which is 13 all white males in the back room,” said Sellers, describing Republican proposals as a “travesty of justice.”
Moments earlier, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) expressed similar resentment, implicitly calling for political quotas based on sex: “Right now, you’ve got thirteen men writing a bill that’s gonna affect more than 50% of the population is women.”
State of the Union host, Jake Tapper, was silent on his panelists’ lamentations regarding racial and sex quotas for politicians. Neither Rick Santorum nor Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA) — also panelists for the discussion — responded to either Sellers’ or Dingell’s racial or gender-based agitation.
Tapper presents himself as a politically objective and non-partisan news media figure. CNN similarly presents itself as a politically objective and non-partisan news media outlet, billing itself as “The Most Trust Name In News.”