ABC reporter Matt Gutman gushed: "(She is) set to become the first U.S. woman ever to compete at the Olympics wearing a hijab. And she wasn't at all en garde, sorry for the pun, for breaking barriers and slashing her way into history."
NBC found Muhammad's mentor, Peter Westbrook, to praise her: "She is an absolute role model for the children, for our organization, for Islamic people, for all Americans all over the world." On CBS, Charlie Rose said, "Sounds like she's a superachiever."
Well, no. Actually, Muhammad lost in her second-round sabre match and didn't move beyond the round of 16.
Prior to the opening ceremony, CNN host/"sociopolitical comedian" W. Kamau Bell penned a column for CNN online, insisting that Michael Phelps, America's greatest Olympian, offer the "noble gesture" of letting Muhammad carry the American flag at the opening ceremonies. He wrote that Phelps didn't "need the honor" and should bow to the "one-stop inclusion shop." He told Phelps to step aside, saying, "No offense, but right now America has enough tall, successful, rich white guys hogging the spotlight trying to make America great...again."
If the mission is to find an American who does not support American greatness, Muhammad is an excellent choice. To say she's not a fan of the United States is to put it mildly. Part of her "role model" behavior is denouncing this country. The Daily Beast headlined her claim: "I'm Not Safe In The U.S." She denounced a "climate of anti-Islamic sentiment in the United States" and said she "had someone follow me home from practice and try to report me to police ... right on 28th and 7th in New York City."
That kind of blame-America thinking resonates with the elites.
Like other journalists, NBC's Morgan Radford played up the Islamophobia angle, saying, "But while she suits up for the red, white and blue, she's faced with the painful reminder that some don't think those stars and stripes belong to her."
On CBS, reporter Elaine Quijano explained, "Muhammad says she owes it to her community to use her platform as an Olympic athlete to speak out against hate." Muhammad claimed, "I had a man encounter me on the street and told me that I looked suspicious, and that I looked like I was (going to) blow something up."
Here's what all these glowing stories omitted: Columnist Pamela Geller displayed a 2008 social media post in which Muhammad posted a picture of another Muslim woman, Leila Khaled, who made history as the first female hijacker of an airplane, working with the terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In the photo, Khaled is holding a gun and smiling. Next to the photo, Muhammad wrote in a comment, "me with a gun."
In that same spirit, Muhammad's Twitter page carried a series of #FreePalestine hashtags and nasty headlines against Israel, including "Israel accused of war crimes by UK Parliament," "Bolivia declares Israel a terrorist state" and "Israel Guilty of Ethnic Cleansing and Apartheid, Says UN Rapporteur."
She's also a big Black Lives Matter fan. When a police officer wasn't indicted for the death of Eric Garner in 2014, Muhammad tweeted, "Don't forget to set your clocks back 100 years tonight" with the hashtag #NewJimCrow. In the same time period, she tweeted out a story headlined, "The UN Just Issued a Scathing Critique of America's Justice System."
But the left thinks she was the perfect candidate to proudly bear the American flag at the Olympic parade.
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