Richard Engel

Thanks, Hillary! Morning Joe's Middle East a Smoking Ruin
By Mark Finkelstein | March 23, 2015 | 11:22 AM EDT

Warning: readers are advised to hide the sharp objects before viewing the clip of Morning Joe's review of the Middle East today.  The picture painted is one of the utter failure of US foreign policy, leaving a devastated, deadly region in its woeful wake.

We open with President Obama's "mission accomplished" moment from last year in which he called US policy in Yemen "successful." Cut to Jim Miklaszewski saying that the White House had to order US special forces out of the country, leaving us with absolutely no leverage. Then to Iraq, where two experts say Iraq as a country is finished and falling under the hand of Iran's radical Quds forces.  On to Israel, where even Richard Engel chides President Obama for the churlish way he has perpetuated his public spat with Bibi. Donny Deutsch sounds a political note, observing that many Dem-leaning Jews—including big donors—side with Bibi, thus presenting Hillary with a big challenge for 2016. 

NBC’s Richard Engel Rips Obama’s ISIS Strategy; ‘Not a Problem That Can Be Droned Away’
By Curtis Houck | February 19, 2015 | 3:30 AM EST

While his fellow network news colleagues all but ignored any criticism of President Obama’s speech on Wednesday afternoon and his avoidance of using the term Islamic extremism, NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel ripped the current U.S. strategy for defeating ISIS during NBC Nightly News. “ISIS is spreading like a virus and months of U.S.-led air strikes don't seem to be containing it,” declared Engel at the onset of his report.

NBC Spotlights 'Evil,' 'Barbaric' ISIS Atrocities Against Yazidi Women
By Matthew Balan | February 16, 2015 | 4:56 PM EST

On Friday's NBC Nightly News, Richard Engel zeroed in on an ISIS atrocity that hasn't gotten enough media attention – its sexual enslavement of women from Iraqi minority groups, especially the Yazidis. Engel interviewed two Yazidi women who escaped from their Islamist captors, and spotlighted that "ISIS is reviving the barbaric tradition of the slave trade." He later bluntly added, "There's a word we don't use a lot in the news media, but it fits here. This is evil. It was absolute evil by design."

Networks Combine For Two Minutes on Fall of Yemen’s Government; Spent 11 Minutes on Deflategate
By Curtis Houck | January 22, 2015 | 11:01 PM EST

On Thursday night, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC each covered the news that the United States-backed government in Yemen had fallen after rebels stormed the capital city of Sana’a and surrounded the presidential palace on Tuesday. 

While the networks gave this story airtime, they only gave it to the tune of one minute and 59 seconds and avoided any mention of how President Obama had, just months prior, declared Yemen to be a success story for the United States in fighting terrorism.

NBC’s Richard Engel Slams Obama on Foreign Policy: ‘Outlining a World That He Wishes We Were’ In
By Curtis Houck | January 21, 2015 | 7:07 AM EST

While NBC News was up to its usual business in praising and defending President Obama both before and after his State of the Union speech, chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel emerged as a rare voice that instead took to the liberal network’s airwaves to condemn the President’s rhetoric on foreign policy as both unrealistic and, in many cases, simply not true. 

After being asked by anchor Brian Williams for his thoughts, Engel began dissecting the President’s perceived world outlook: “Well, it sounded like the President was outlining a world that he wishes we were all living in but which is very different than the world that you just described with terror raids taking place across Europe, ISIS very much on the move.”

NBC Reporters Reject Own Poll Showing Americans Support CIA Interrogations
By Kyle Drennen | December 16, 2014 | 5:24 PM EST

On her 12 p.m. ET hour MSNBC show on Tuesday, host Andrea Mitchell could barely conceal her disgust while reporting on a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showing a majority of Americans supported the enhanced interrogation tactics used by the CIA after September 11th: "51% said that the procedures used, the interrogation enhanced tactics, which have been defined as torture, 51% said that they were acceptable under the circumstances. Only 28% said that they went too far."

NBC Reporter Sees Dem Senate Report 'Rewriting History' and 'Settling Scores'
By Kyle Drennen | December 9, 2014 | 12:41 PM EST

Appearing on MSNBC's NewsNation on Tuesday, NBC's chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel took the Democrat-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee to task for its so-called "torture report" slamming CIA interrogation tactics used against terrorist detainees: "I think this is really about changing the narrative of American history....everyone in the world knew what was going on, including by the way, the Senate, which is now pretending to be a bit of a babe in the woods."

ABC, CBS Ignore News That the Intelligence Community Actually Did Warn Obama About ISIS Threat
By Curtis Houck | September 29, 2014 | 9:44 PM EDT

Throughout the day on Monday, several sources in the intelligence community disputed President Obama’s comments in an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes that aired on Sunday night that the intelligence community and Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper are to blame for not recognizing the threat posed by ISIS.

On the Monday evening newscasts of the major broadcast networks, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir chose to ignore the story all together while the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley simply re-aired Obama’s comments from 60 Minutes the night prior without acknowledging the criticisms since the interview aired. NBC Nightly News offered a stark contrast as it aired a two-and-a-half-minute segment that included not only Obama’s comments, but congressional testimony from intelligence officials over the past year warning of ISIS and reports from NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel going back to January that both cited the falling apart of the Iraqi army in being able to hold territory and losses in territory to terrorists that U.S. troops had secured during the Iraq war.

NBC Hails 'Candid' Obama As He Passes the Buck On ISIS Failure
By Kyle Drennen | September 29, 2014 | 12:23 PM EDT

Even as President Obama clearly attempted during a Sunday 60 Minutes interview to blame others for his failure to recognize ISIS as a growing threat in the Middle East, Monday's NBC Today spun the buck-passing as a "very candid" admission by the commander-in-chief.

Co-host Matt Lauer opened the morning show by proclaiming: "Underestimated. The President admits his administration and U.S. intelligence officials misjudged the threat of ISIS." While that headline suggested to viewers that Obama was taking responsibility for the failure, a soundbite ran of the President distancing himself from blame: "I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria."

NBC’s Jansing: Midterm Outcome Could Change if Americans ‘Rally Around’ Obama
By Curtis Houck | September 11, 2014 | 10:23 PM EDT

On Thursday’s NBC Nightly News, senior White House correspondent Chris Jansing provided not only spin favorable to President Obama a day after his prime time speech on ISIS, but also suggested that this could help the President in the midterm elections. At the conclusion of her report, Jansing told viewers that: "It's a war the President inherited with decisions made now shaping his legacy and his successor's as well. Something else to watch, while it's too soon to tell how voters will react to the President's plan from last night, if they rally around the Commander-in-Chief it could impact the midterm elections with control of the Senate at stake."

NBC Still Touts Obama ISIS Strategy After NBC Reporter Slams It As 'Wildly Off-Base'
By Kyle Drennen | September 11, 2014 | 5:08 PM EDT

On Thursday's NBC Today, several hours after NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel ripped President Obama's strategy to combat ISIS as being "wildly off-base," correspondent Peter Alexander promoted the commander-in-chief's Wednesday primetime address: "President Obama announced that he would lead a broad coalition to destroy ISIS....The war will be more like those in Yemen and Somalia, Mr. Obama stressed..." [Listen to the audio]

At the core of Engel's criticism of the President was the notion that the same strategy used to combat Al Qaeda forces in places like Yemen and Somalia could also be used to fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Engel dismissed the idea as "an oversimplification of the problem," warning that the situations were "not comparable at all."

NBC’s Richard Engel Pans Obama’s ISIS Speech As ‘Wildly Off-Base’ and ‘an Oversimplification of the Problem’
By Curtis Houck | September 11, 2014 | 7:07 AM EDT

After President Obama’s speech to the nation on Wednesday night, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow asked NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel what he thought of President Obama’s analogy that the U.S. strategy in fighting terrorism in Yemen and Somalia would carry over to dealing with the Islamic terrorist group ISIS in both Iraq and Syria. Needless to say, Engel was not at all pleased with the comparison the President made, telling Maddow immediately that “I think it is wildly off base, frankly” and “[i]t's an oversimplification of the problem.”