Democrats swept the midterms, and the American press responded the only way it knows how — BuzzFeed served up memes and Breitbart served up foreign leaders' hot takes, while the bills pile up on your kitchen table.
Here is what actually happened: Democrats took the Senate and the House. That is a fact both outlets confirm. What happens next to the price of groceries, the border, or your kids' schools — the things that drove people to the polls — received barely a word.
BuzzFeed's contribution was a round-up of 48 tweets from women celebrating the blue wave. The headline: "First Day Of My Period Today And It Came Out Blue." One tweet celebrated by "doing a line of vaccines to celebrate." BuzzFeed framed the entire Democratic takeover as content — "hilarious women of the internet + a blue wave in the midterms = a historic level of entertainment," the author wrote. Pure PEMDAS, apparently. Your republic, reduced to a punchline.
Breitbart, to its credit, at least covered something resembling governance — but its lens pointed outward, not at you. The outlet catalogued foreign governments lining up to tell Washington what to do next. Spain's socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez celebrated the result as a defeat for the "far-right wave" and compared it to Lula's reelection in Brazil. South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa, fresh off the U.S. revoking his country's duty-free market access, said he hoped the midterms would bring "a coming together of minds" on trade and geopolitics. The Kremlin's Dmitry Peskov said he hoped Trump would continue "peacemaking efforts" on Ukraine, while Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned that the Democratic activist wing is "extremely negative" toward Russia. European leaders, according to Breitbart, anticipated the Democrat victory would pull Trump closer to their positions on climate, development aid, and the Ukraine war.
Buried in the Breitbart piece was the one line that actually matters to working Americans. French Finance Minister Roland Lescure said Trump must either "acknowledge that changes are necessary, particularly regarding gasoline prices, which directly affect people" — or dig in. That is the stake. Gasoline. Groceries. The cost of living. And it took a French bureaucrat to say it, in a story about what foreigners want from Washington.
Two outlets, one event, the same omission. BuzzFeed turns your election into a comedy club. Breitbart turns it into a global advisory board for foreign interests. Neither asks the question the founders would have asked in those taverns: who is this government going to serve — the people who elected it, or the institutions that already run it?
The Democrats now control both chambers. The press is already deciding what you're allowed to care about.
