In France, Bastille Day in Nice turned into a night of horror when a truck driver plowed into the crowd watching the fireworks, killing 80 people. Many of those killed are children. President Francois Hollande addressed the nation, extending the state of emergency that was set to expire on July 26 by three months. It was instituted after the ISIS struck Paris in November of 2015, killing at least 120 people. It looks like an act of terrorism. Who is responsible? Was it ISIS? Why are terrorists targeting France? These are all pertinent questions. Yet, CNN decided to let its intelligence analyst Robert Baer go off on a tangent on Erin Brunett’s OutFront, where he pretty much said that rightward shifts in politics create security problems.
Baer, a fomer CIA agent, mentioned that there is a sizable slice of the French population that supports ISIS, they’re converts from Christianity, and they’re joining the terror organization. The nation’s inability to stop this flow is a problem for France, and wider European politics, as the continent will lurch the to the right.
That’s what worries Baer? That conservative politics will become more dominant and endanger the general public, not the terrorists who are trying to kill us. He made a similar inference about conservative politics when he brought up Israel. We’ve seen these sorts of attacks there, where terrorists use their cars to run into Israeli bus stops. Yet, the notion that Israel shifting right and remaining that way after the last election puts “the whole population at risk” is absurd. If anything, it shows how people don’t trust the Left with their security. Managing Editor of Newsbusters, Curtis Houck, clipped and transcribed the exchange:
ERIN BURNETT: And Bob Baer, you know, talk about — as Jim is pointing this out so correctly, a new weapon and yet something that is not new at all. I mean, it's a truck. It was just a truck. Yes, it was loaded with explosives, but the explosives didn't even go off. This was just driving.BOB BAER: Well, they just — you know, they're making sure that they cause casualties and they — by the way, they watched in Israel the damage done to the Israelis, just cars driving through crowds and killing people and has driven Isareli politics far to the right and put the whole population at risk as well as knives. So, if they can't get the guns, they move to trucks and they keep on switching tactics. The main thing for them is getting people that are determined to do things like this and there are a lot in France. I mean, the French, by the way, have really cracked down over the last year. I mean, they've been profiling, going after people and making raids, putting tons of people on things, listening to the phones, but these people are very disciplined and they do not talk on the phone and that's why they can get through and attack something like Nice.
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7:50 p.m. Eastern
BAER: Well, exactly, Erin, that's what so bad for the French is they've got, you know, they've got a large population that's sympathetic to the Islamic State. A lot of converts from Christianity have joined the Islamic State. It's a problem they can't get a hold of and what worries me is this is going to turn European politics very far to the Front, Le Pen —
BURNETT: Yes.
BAER: The right is – you know —
BURNETT: The far-right in France, yes.
BAER: The candidate there for the presidency, the far right, this is going to boost them. It’s going to boost Brexit. It’s going to boost the Germans and the rest of them because it can happen anywhere in Europe, but again, I go back to these weapons. Are they coming across boats from Libya? Are they coming from Turkey? We simply don't know and what we do is that the Islamic State — I’m not saying this was an Islamic state, we're going to find out soon enough, but that they can keep on going and they have this bottomless, you know, well of adherence, and that's what scares the Europeans.
So, there you have it - shifts to the right in politics is one of the biggest problems facing Europe after this attack, or it’s a sign that the left-leaning elements in Europe have failed to grasp the severity of the situation. Nations voting for right-leaning governments is a significant concern…please. Conservative politics puts people at risk–ridiculous.
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