Katy Tur claims ‘almost no middle class’ left in America; citizens ‘living on the poverty line’

Americans tuning in the week to Katy Tur’s “MSNBC Live” were informed that there is “almost no middle class” left in the nation.

The anchor told Commentary magazine’s John Podhoretz and Zerlina Maxwell, director of progressive programming for SiriusXM, that a small group of U.S. billionaires are out of touch those “basically living on the poverty line.”

“You have people like Howard Schultz, Mike Bloomberg, Jeff Bezos, the list goes on, who make tons of money … you have this class of people who have more wealth and everybody else combined and almost no middle class any longer, and people who have no money whatsoever who are basically living on the poverty line,” she said Wednesday, the media watchdog NewsBusters reported.

“That’s a crazy thing to say, Katy,” Mr. Podhoretz said during a debate, which rested on claims by some of the 800,000 federal employees who had financial hardship during the partial government shutdown.

“We just had a government shutdown where 800,000 federal workers were missing one or two paychecks and a number of them said that they were worried about paying groceries,” the host said.

“That doesn’t mean that they’re not the middle class,” Mr. Podhoretz countered. “Middle class is an income level. … The median income in this country has gone up $6,000 in the last two years from 47 to $53,000 a year.”

Ms. Tur, undeterred, continued: “The strength of the middle class does not match what it used to be.”

“Watch the 2020 election,” Mr. Podhoretz replied. “The entire 2020 election is going to be fought trying to get middle-class voters to vote for you. If there are no people in the middle class, that’s a dumb strategy.”