Would John Heilemann have called Francois Hollande "shameless" and "un-French" if a few months back he had halted the immigration of Syrian immigrants into France, thus stopping two of the Paris terrorists—who reportedly posed as refugees—from entering the country?
The question arises because on today's With All Due Respect, Heilemann condemned as "shameless" and "un-American" the dozen or so governors, mainly Republicans, who have declared that their states won't accept Syrian refugees.
In the wake of the terrorist slaughter in Paris, one might expect coverage of the Obama administration’s announcement that five more detainees would be released from Guantanamo Bay. Yet, NBC’s Today show, despite a four hour run-time, ignored the story. The New York Times, which often is used by the networks to select story topics, covered the release.
On Thursday, October 22, 2015, President Barack Obama signed a veto message of the National Defense Authorization Act. The NDAA establishes budgets and policies for the Defense Department, and in the last 53 years it has only been vetoed four times. Coverage of the veto signing and its significance has been rather dismal despite Obama summoning the White House press for a public signing. ABC and NBC aired nothing. Here are the brief mentions the other networks offered on the funding for our troops and their salaries, as well as benefits and training. CNN, PBS, and CBS provided brief statements on the NDAA and its planned veto by the President. Meanwhile, Fox News devoted a portion of time greater than the other networks combined.
It's not just the New York Times news pages that lean left -- conservative viewpoints are virtually shut out of the paper's opinion pages as well, especially under the regime of toxically smug liberal Andrew Rosenthal, whose hobbies include calling Republicans racist and homophobic. The Sunday Review section has long been a particularly opinionated outpost, with Rosenthal using the day of leisure to print left-wing essays. The September 20 Sunday Review was a nearly flawless compendium of economic and social liberalism.
Appearing on MSNBC’s The Rundown on Monday, The Atlantic’s Washington editor-at-large Steve Clemons dismissed criticism of the Obama administration trading five Taliban prisoners for Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl: “Well, look, I think we need to turn this on its head. There's been a lot of conventional reporting about the Taliban Five....These are important people, but they were largely paper pushers.”
On Monday, as has been their habit going back at least to the Clinton administration, Investor's Business Daily's editorialists once again broke a story the establishment press likely could have reported years ago.
IBD revealed that the Obama administration "was secretly negotiating the Taliban Five's release without (Bowe) Bergdahl." IBD reasonably believes that coming up with any reason to get the five out of Guantanamo Bay was important to the administration, as it would set a precedent for releasing others from the facility, and eventually emptying and closing it against the will of the majority of Congress, the U.S. military, intelligence officials, and the American people.
Bush Derangement Syndrome is alive, well, and living in the head of Nancy A. Youssef at the Daily Beast.
In a March 26 item tagged "Fallen Hero" (?!) about the Army charging Bowe Bergdahl with "desertion and misbehaving before the enemy," the web site's Senior National Security Correspondent wrote that "the administration celebrated negotiating his release after years of failed bids by both the current and former administration." But Bergdahl walked away from his post in June 2009, five months after Barack Obama's inauguration. Youssef's report actually had worse components than that.
Haras Rafiq blasted the blame-everyone-but-the-terrorist mindset of many on the left on Thursday's New Day on CNN during a discussion of ISIS member "Jihadi John," who has been identified by several media outlets as Mohammed Emwazi. Rafiq singled out a British organization, CAGE, for their defense of Emwazi, who has personally beheaded several Western hostages: "I'm quite disgusted at the way that they've actually tried to co-opt the victim mentality as an excuse almost to try to justify this person's radicalization."
The three major networks have, so far, devoted a staggering 67 minutes and 49 seconds to obsessing over every aspect of whether the New England Patriots cheated in their AFC championship win on Sunday. Yet, only ABC allowed a scant 34 seconds to the Obama administration's release of five terrorists out of Guantanamo Bay and back to areas connected with extremist violence.
As of 6 pm Eastern on Thursday, CNN has devoted just 19 seconds of air time to the release of five prisoners from Guantanamo Bay detention facilities – a news brief during the New Day program. This is still more coverage than CBS and NBC, as both Big Three networks ignored the story on their Thursday morning newscasts. ABC gave a 16-second news brief on Good Morning America.
The ability of tiny numbers of far-left fringe group demonstrators to get undue press attention virtually any time they want continues to be intensely annoying.
In mid-2007, Barack Obama made closing the prison at Guantanmo Bay a core promise of his 2008 campaign. That was 7-1/2 years ago. Obama has been in office six years. Gitmo is still open. So naturally, the aggrieved professional protesters at Code Pink organized a demonstration against Gitmo remaining active on yesterday's 13th anniversary of the prison's opening — at former Vice President Dick Cheney's house. They got far more ink and bandwidth than they deserved from the press, including Reuters — i.e., far more than nothing.
During her Friday show on MSNBC, amid live coverage of French authorities killing multiple terror suspects following dual hostage standoffs, host Andrea Mitchell lamented the fact that President Obama's political agenda may be setback by the attacks in Paris. Talking to Maine Senator Angus King, she fretted: "Do you think that this terror incident will in any way slow down the President's intention to continue drawing down from Guantanamo and to eventually close that facility, if possible?"