On Sunday's The Weekend: Primetime, MS NOW hosts gave no pushback as left-wing activist Cameron Kasky (one of the Parkland student anti-gun activists) obnoxiously compared Israeli troops to gunmen who attack schools in the U.S. and murder children. He even accused Israel of committing "genocide" in Gaza. How tone-deaf does that sound after all the children Hamas murdered on October 7?
In the same segment, fill-in co-host Melissa Murray hinted that pro-life conservatives are being hypocritical by defending the war in Iran.
Co-host Ayman Mohyeldin set up the segment by claiming that Republicans have shown an "indifference" to the "suffering of children" on issues ranging from wars in the Middle East to Jeffrey Epstein, and showed clips of Republicans defending the war in Iran in light of a girls school being bombed allegedly by the U.S. military.
The MS NOW host asked Kasky for his reaction, posing:
You survived a tragedy, and we were talking about tragedies that children have suffered around the world and here at home -- certainly school shootings probably on top of that list where we -- all we hear at the end of them are thoughts and prayers. But what do you make of how Republicans have reacted to this school shooting [sic] and to the suffering of children, whether it's at ICE, Iran, Gaza or school shootings?
In a CNN town hall in 2018, Kasky looked Marco Rubio in the eye and compared him to the Parkland school shooter, Niklas Cruz. So this smear of Israel came naturally:
Well, my classmates and I learned the hard way years ago how indifferent American lawmakers can be when children are dying. But there is a very important distinction to make here, which is that the shooter who killed 17 people at my high school was apprehended by law enforcement and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Over 105 children have been murdered by Israeli forces in Lebanon in just the past 10 days alone. And while people marched in the streets for my classmates, who is speaking for these children in Lebanon?
He soon tied in race: "In this country, a certain type of child dying is a tragedy, but, elsewhere in the world, if it's brown Muslim children, it means nothing..."
A bit later, he complained: "And in America, the Parkland shooter is looked at as a villain, but, in the state of Israel, the people who are killing these innocents are brave, heroic warriors. And frankly, I think that that is disgusting."
Later on, Kasky again focused on race, noting that the media had given coverage to "crying white mothers," and then tried to link guns involved in school shootings to guns used by the military in the Middle East:
We were the next school shooting -- we were the next community where the news was going to come and film crying white mothers and tell America how sad this was. And we got together and we said, "No, we want people to see how angry we are because this was expected, and this is something that we allow in this country."
And this -- this weapon that was used to shoot up our high school was manufactured by the same arms manufacturers that are selling weapons overseas. So this is all tied together. This -- this is just an industry. This violence is a business.
Murray then jumped in and tried to tie in the abortion issue:
And there's a selective appetite for certain kinds of violence. So the same people who would condone what is happening in Iran or what is happening in Gaza are the same people who have decried the violence to the fetus and talked about their abortion politics for years and years even as you and your classmates cowered under your desk. For your generation, how do you look at the sort of both sides of this political moment and the quote, unquote, party of life?
At the end of the segment, after Kasky made his "genocide" accusation, co-host Catherine Rampell jumped in and contradicted Kasky's premise that white victims in the U.S. always get plenty of attention as she complained that the attack on a synagogue in Michigan has been forgotten too quickly, and called out Democrats who have shown sympathy for the terrorist.
Transcript follows:
MS NOW's The Weekend: Primetime
March 15, 2026
7:37 p.m.
AYMAN MOHYELDIN: Now, this indifference that you heard there to the suffering of children isn't really exclusive to Iran. We've seen it in Gaza, where Republicans like Congressman Randy Fine told Palestinian children to, quote, starve away amid reports of an ongoing famine. And we've seen it closer to home with the Trump administration's cruel treatment of hundreds of detained migrant children. It's also evident in the indifference towards the Epstein survivors, many of whom were minors, when they were abused by the late sex offender and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. Their fight for justice continues to fall on deaf ears in the Republican-controlled White House and Congress. Republicans like to pretend that they care about the children. But whether it's Iran, Gaza, ICE or Epstein, for them, children are merely collateral damage.
(...)
MOHYELDIN: You survived a tragedy, and we were talking about tragedies that children have suffered around the world and here at home -- certainly school shootings probably on top of that list where we -- all we hear at the end of them are thoughts and prayers. But what do you make of how Republicans have reacted to this school shooting [sic] and to the suffering of children, whether it's at ICE, Iran, Gaza or school shootings?
CAMERON KASKY, HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST: Well, my classmates and I learned the hard way years ago how indifferent American lawmakers can be when children are dying. But there is a very important distinction to make here, which is that the shooter who killed 17 people at my high school was apprehended by law enforcement and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Over 105 children have been murdered by Israeli forces in Lebanon in just the past 10 days alone. And while people marched in the streets for my classmates, who is speaking for these children in Lebanon? Who -- where is their voice? Where is the outrage about those deaths? In this country, a certain type of child dying is a tragedy, but, elsewhere in the world, if it's brown Muslim children, it means nothing -- it's negligible -- people just kind of shrug it off.
(...)
Look, I survived the Parkland shooting -- I was there. I was also in Palestine, and I can promise you something: The feeling my classmates and I had of uncertainty of maybe the next person we see is going to be the person who's going to shoot us dead, that is all the children in Palestine know. That is all they've known for their entire lives. And in America, the Parkland shooter is looked at as a villain, but, in the state of Israel, the people who are killing these innocents are brave, heroic warriors. And frankly, I think that that is disgusting.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Cameron, can I ask you for you personally and then also just for young people of your generation, what has it done to you to grow up experiencing these things -- to see these images -- to understand war, I think, in a way that's different from previous generations?
(...)
KASKY: Well, violence is one of the only things that America is capable of manufacturing anymore. And that is something my classmates and I saw our entire lives. We were born right after Columbine -- Sandy Hook shooting happened when we were fairly young. The Aurora shooting happened when we were locked in our classrooms. Hiding under our desks, we had no question as to what was going on. We were the next school shooting -- we were the next community where the news was going to come and film crying white mothers and tell America how sad this was.
And we got together and we said, "No, we want people to see how angry we are because this was expected, and this is something that we allow in this country." And this -- this weapon that was used to shoot up our high school was manufactured by the same arms manufacturers that are selling weapons overseas. So this is all tied together. This -- this is just an industry. This violence is a business.
MELISSA MURRAY: Well, it's also a politics, though. And there's a selective appetite for certain kinds of violence. So the same people who would condone what is happening in Iran or what is happening in Gaza are the same people who have decried the violence to the fetus and talked about their abortion politics for years and years even as you and your classmates cowered under your desk. For your generation, how do you look at the sort of both sides of this political moment and the quote, unquote, party of life?
KASKY: Well, we know that the Republican party and also a lot of people in the Democratic party weigh lives differently. It's just things have changed. Gaza very much changed the world order because there used to be something called rules of engagement. When we were at war, there were certain rules that needed to be followed, and there were certain protections that needed to be in place for the civilian population. Gaza was very much a laboratory where the world was experimenting. There are military lawyers who are studying Gaza and the international world's response and saying, "Wait a second, these laws in place, these international laws that were put there after World War II to create something of a world order, these don't really apply anymore."
So now you have the U.S. most likely bombing this school in Iran, and we're using the same playbook that the state of Israel has used during the ongoing genocide in Gaza. It is either, "These people who were killed deserved it, and they were a valid target, this didn't actually happen at all -- it's a lie," or, "This was actually the enemy -- we didn't do this." And very often you don't even need to coordinate these responses. It's either, "Oh, there were actually terrorists there. Oh, these people deserved it."
CATHERINE RAMPELL: It's -- I mean, there's some of this happening here too. I'm sorry.
KASKY: Tell me more.
RAMPELL: I don't know, there was a would be terrorist who tried to shoot up a Jewish preschool three days ago and --
KASKY: And was apprehended and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
RAMPELL: And there are liberal mayors in Michigan who are saying -- suggesting that it was okay or that there were mitigating factors because he had some family members who were killed recently, who the state of Lebanon has said may have been members of Hezbollah. So like the idea that we care about Americans, we, you know, we always care about Americans, and we don't care about brown children abroad.
We should care about all children, and it is very upsetting to me repeatedly that we keep on -- we keep on ignoring the fact that there was literally an attempted mass shooting a few days ago that is being excused by a number of Democrats in Michigan because those kids were Jewish who had nothing to do with Israel. Sorry. We had a conversation about this last night, and I feel like the same thing happened then, but.
KASKY: Well, there's no excuse for terror.
RAMPELL: There's no excuse for terror, and we should condemn it, regardless of the religion or the race or the nationality of the children who are being targeted. That's that's all I have to say.
KASKY: And I happen to agree.
