Foreign Policy

On Friday's World News Tonight, ABC's David Muir avoided mentioning the critics as he reported on the Obama administration removing Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Instead, Muir spotlighted how "President Obama [told] us back in December his plans to restore diplomatic ties with the Cuban government," and that during a January 2015 visit to the island country, "the children of…

In an interview with newly announced Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Thursday’s Good Morning America, co-host George Stephanopoulos tried to put the former Pennsylvania senator on the spot: “Rand Paul had something interesting to say about ISIS this morning.” A clip followed of Paul declaring on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday: “ISIS exists and grew stronger because of the…

The Associated Press and Stephen Braun did all they could to cover for the Clintons yesterday. First, the wire service attached the most boring headline imaginable to Braun's story about Bill Clinton's shell company shenanigans: "Bill Clinton company shows complexity of family finances." The message to subscribers, particularly the broadcast networks: "This is boring and time-consuming. Don't…

Associated Press reporter Sarah El Deeb and Abu Bilal al-Homsi, the person she now describes as a "Syrian fighter," have had a long acquaintance. Sarah's and Abu's long-term relationship culminated in a Tuesday afternoon story which AP condensed into 140 characters on Twitter as follows: "Marriage, honeymoons and welfare: @AP exclusive shows Islamic State membership has its privileges." A great…

At the top of Tuesday’s Kelly File on the Fox News Channel, host Megyn Kelly tore into President Obama and his remarks at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day where “America's commander in chief celebrate[d] the absence of a major war, while his own top security advisers warn the American people directly that the danger right now is greater than at any time in a half century.”

I think it's a safe assumption that I need to inform the vast majority of readers here that former Democratic Massachusetts Congressman Patrick Murphy has a new weekend show on MSNBC. On that show on Sunday, Murphy interviewed House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. In the "Who was more out of touch?" contest between the two, it was a draw. Murphy asserted that the war against ISIS had "mixed…

In a Thursday interview recorded for Megyn Kelly's Fox News show that evening, Charles Krauthammer provided stunning evidence rarely mentioned even on Fox — and almost never in the establishment press — relating to how unserious the administration's and the Pentagon's "strategy" has been in containing, let alone defeating, ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Krauthammer began discussing the inadequacy of…

Today at Arlington Cemetery, President Obama said — not kidding — "For many of us, this Memorial Day is especially meaningful; it is the first since our war in Afghanistan came to an end." He immediately added: "Today is the first Memorial Day in 14 years that the United States is not engaged in a major ground war." At the White House's twitter account, one finds the first of those two sentences…

In the early 1990s, politicians floated the term “peace dividend” regarding a hoped-for post-Cold War reduction in the U.S. defense budget, and Pentagon spending indeed fell somewhat in the mid- and late ‘90s. Sean McElwee, a research associate at the lefty think tank Demos, argues that America now needs a post-9/11, post-Afghanistan, post-Iraq peace dividend which would allow greatly increased…

Today’s conservative legislators may not be as dumb as a box of rocks or so dumb it takes them an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes (HT: Rodney Dangerfield) but Daily Kos writer Hunter is willing to claim that they’re “the dumbest we've ever had. You have to credit the tea party Republicans for that one—they know what they want, and by golly if it can ooze its way into a suit and tie they'll…

Ana Marie Cox remains a committed liberal, her Christian coming out, as she described it, notwithstanding.  Even so, she had a raw truth-telling moment this morning that will not please Hillary fans. On Steve Kornacki's MSNBC show, Cox declared that close Hillary associate and informal foreign policy adviser Sidney Blumenthal is "kind of a scumbag." A scandalized Kornacki quickly interjected "…

On Al Sharpton's MSNBC show today, former DNC Chairman Ed Rendell dared congressional Republicans to recall Hillary Clinton to testify about Benghazi. Calling Clinton a "tough cookie," Rendell vowed that "Hillary will put them in short pants." Paging Camille Paglia . . . Rendell surely thought he was paying Hillary a compliment.  But is this really the Hillary persona that Dems want to project:…

Friday's New Day on CNN played up that the Hillary Clinton e-mails revealed by the New York Times "dispute the narrative that has been around for two years that she was trying to cover something up" about the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, as Alisyn Camerota put it. The CNN anchor also wondered, "Isn't this the opposite of what the GOP has been saying about her – that she...tried to keep it…

The morning after he appeared on multiple MSNBC and NBC programs to rip President Obama’s handling of ISIS, NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel joined the Friday panel of MSNBC’s Morning Joe to continue his streak of tearing into the President for a “confused” and “self-contradictory” plan that “fights itself.”