It’s amazing to think that the Tea Party movement kicked off fifteen years ago and it’s important to remember how the media covered it. When you look at the coverage of Trump and Trump supporters today, the media coverage isn’t much different. It tends to swing back and forth between mockery and outright disdain.

Like then, today’s media is largely made up of people on the left. They never seemed to figure out that the Tea Party led almost directly to Trump.

Rich Noyes of NewsBusters has rounded up some golden oldies of media coverage:

FLASHBACK: When a Juvenile News Media Tried to Destroy the Tea Party

The first T.E.A. Party (Taxed Enough Already) protests took place in various cities on February 27, 2009, a reaction to presumed new taxes that would inevitably result from the Obama administration’s huge bailouts and spending programs. A major national protest was scheduled for April 15, “tax day,” the deadline for filing federal income tax forms.

Filling in as host of MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann on April 13, David Shuster mocked the Tea Party by repeatedly deploying a slang term for a sex act called “teabagging.”

“It’s going to be teabagging day for the right-wing and they’re going nuts for it. Thousands of them whipped out the festivities early this past weekend, and while the parties are officially toothless, the teabaggers are full-throated about their goals,” Shuster sophomorically sneered.

The next night, CNN’s Anderson Cooper got into the act. “Republicans are pretty much in disarray…They’re searching for their voice,” analyst David Gergen dryly opined on the April 14 AC360. “It’s hard to talk when you’re teabagging,” Cooper snickered…

On CNN that afternoon, correspondent Susan Roesgen decried the protest as “a party for Obama bashers….It’s anti-government, anti-CNN, since this is highly promoted by the right wing conservative network, Fox. And since I can’t really hear much more and I think this is not really family viewing, I’ll toss it back to you.”

Watch the two clips mentioned above:

Since NPR’s media bias has been in the news lately, it seems appropriate to share this screen-cap from an actual segment on the taxpayer funded outlet:

Reminder: This is how NPR covered the Tea Party movement in 2010. pic.twitter.com/QfM2lCllMk

— Mike LaChance (@MikeLaChance33) April 14, 2024

What is the takeaway from all of this? It’s simple. The media has not changed in fifteen years. Anything they see as a threat to their progressive ideology is either mocked as stupid, painted as a dangerous threat to the established order, or both.

They have not learned a thing.

Featured image via YouTube.

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