Appearing as a guest on Friday's Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN, during a discussion of President Barack Obama's news conference, CNN's Fareed Zakaria downplayed the threat to the U.S. posed by ISIS as he forwarded the President's view that ISIS "does not pose an existential threat," noting that President Obama "often points out that gun violence takes many, many more people" in the U.S. than radical Islamic terrorism.
After substitute host John Berman recalled that Obama has downplayed the ISIS threat in the recent past only to have terrorist attacks like those in Paris or San Bernardino happen soon afterwards, Zakaria asserted that Obama "thinks cable news goes nuts and, you know, massively exaggerates this phenomena." The Fareed Zakaria GPS host then repeated the statistic that many more people have died in gun-related incidents in the U.S. than terrorism, even though terrorism, unlike gun violence, represents a motivated enemy who would like to find ways to drastically increase casualties in the future.
Opening the discussion at 8:29 p.m. ET, host Berman posed:
You know, Fareed, listening to the President, his language choice in dealing with ISIS is always very interesting. Today he made the point, he thinks ISIS is losing ground. He said ISIS is being squeezed inside Syria and Iraq. Is this to reassure the American public? Or is this to battle against people who are saying he's not doing enough.
Zakaria began his response:
I think Obama has a conception of American interests and security that says, "Look, we are very strong, we are very powerful, we are actually very secure. ISIS does not pose an existential threat to the United States the way the Soviet Union did with thousands of nuclear missiles pointed at us. It is a nasty, venomous terrorist organization that, every now and then, is able to kill, you know, five Americans here or a dozen or 14 here."
He then added:
But, you know, he often points out that gun violence takes many, many more people. So I think part of what he is trying to do is to deliberately not hype the threat, not scare people, and yes, to point out he does have it under control.
Berman followed up:
But he's been burned before on days that he said ISIS has been contained. You know, later that day, later that week, there has been a terror attack. So now he-
Zakaria continued to act as Obama's spokesman as he jumped in:
But he wouldn't, but, John, to push back just to explain what he thinks. He doesn't think he's been burned. He thinks cable news goes nuts and, you know, massively exaggerates this phenomena and doesn't take into, you know, keep in mind that, since 9/11, 45 people have been killed by Islamic terrorist organizations. In that same period, 150,000 people have been killed by guns. So his argument, and you heard it again today, was, "I don't like cable news, I don't like the way that you peddle this stuff and you exaggerate it."
Although Zakaria framed his remarks as President Obama's point of view, the CNN host has himself put forth similar opinions in recent weeks, complaining about the willingness to go to war against an "other," but not to enact more gun laws.
