Yesterday was an insane day. CNN, the Obamas, the Clintons, George Soros, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Robert De Niro, John Brennan, and former Attorney General Eric Holder were all targeted with explosive devices. Luckily, none of them went off, and no one was injured. CNN’s New York office was evacuated for a brief time.
Via NYT:
Pipe bombs were sent to several prominent Democrats, including former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, setting off an intense investigation on Wednesday into whether figures vilified by the right were being targeted.
From Washington to New York to Florida to Los Angeles, the authorities intercepted a wave of crudely built devices that were contained in manila envelopes.
And before dawn on Thursday, investigators discovered that another package had been sent to Robert De Niro, the actor and filmmaker who has been an outspoken critic of President Trump.
Oh, and CNN, the great defenders of truth (in its mind), was on the case (via THR):
"I think everyone has handled it with the resilience you'd expect from a staff of reporters," a reporter told The Hollywood Reporter. "Everyone's journalistic impulses kicked in."
The network has covered the story non-stop, plowing through shoddy telephone and video connections. Jim Sciutto and Poppy Harlow, morning anchors for the network, have delivered important on-air reporting about how the New York Police Department has responded to the bomb found in the Time Warner Center's mailroom.
CNN president Jeff Zucker and several other executives are at the network’s Atlanta headquarters on Wednesday for prescheduled executive meetings. The CNN offices there and in Los Angeles were not evacuated, sources in Atlanta and Los Angeles told THR. But both buildings are “crawling with police,” said one source.
[…]
"It was very calm, but it felt serious," said a New York-based CNN employee. "We were moved by the New York police further and further away from the building. That kept going for a good two hours. It was a little chaotic in the street because traffic was cut off and emergency vehicles were all over. CNN did what CNN does; kept reporting the story from the street corner. There’s not a lot time to have emotion. But big-picture, it’s kind of scary. So I think we’ll feel that later. It starts to feel close to home, when it happens in your building."
“An awful lot of us have covered the wars and been though 9/11,” said another staffer. “And it’s easy to be blasé about this because no one was hurt. We’ve had security scares in the building, they’ve closed one of the entrances. But now we know there are people walking around with guns. So people are really scared and upset. There are people who are very disturbed by this.”
CNN's @wolfblitzer signs off his show with this message: "I want to reassure all our viewers: We will continue to do our job, to report the news fairly and accurately, despite these threats."
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) October 24, 2018
Statement from CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker: pic.twitter.com/OXyIT6oSLT
— CNN Communications (@CNNPR) October 24, 2018
Yes, these people are just like U.S. Marines, just like first responders. It’s a joke. Before we get into the meltdown and accusations that have been flying over the past couple of days, let’s be honest here. The ratings for CNN probably are through the roof, and no one died. They’re eating it up over there probably. Also, CNN still sucks, and so does MSNBC, NBC, and ABC News.
So, who executed this extensive bomb scare against multiple top-level government officials, former presidents, and the elite media? We don’t know. That’s the point. We don’t friggin’ know, but it’s all President Trump’s fault or that of his supporters. Cue the meltdown, the accusations without evidence, and liberal pundits beating their chests, showing how this is a breakdown of American democracy. Cue the overreactions, cue the hypocrisy, and cue the Democrat-media complex working overtime to weaponize this for the 2018 midterms, though I’m not sure how much of an impact it will have.
First up, it’s NBC and ABC blaming Trump. The Media Research Center’s News Analysis Division (i.e., Newsbusters) has been working overtime capturing all the insanity, so if someone over there is reading this, they probably deserve a few glasses of fine bourbon:
During NBC Nightly News, anchor Lester Holt touted CNN President Jeff Zucker for releasing a statement Wednesday “blasting the White House and the President.” It was quite an unusual way to describe the statement given the day’s events.
“Tonight, while the FBI hunts down whoever sent these bombs, and their motives remain unknown, no matter who sent them, there are growing calls to turn down the heated political rhetoric before somebody gets hurt,” Holt declared.
When chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell took over the report, she decried how President Trump had delivered “another fiery speech attacking his favorite targets, Democrats” this week and was “[g]oing after Hillary Clinton and the media, especially CNN.”
“While there are no answers yet on what led to today's incidents, President Trump has the biggest megaphone,” she argued before adding that “there are growing questions about how he’s using it.” After clearly placing the brunt of the blame on Trump, she touted CNN’s combative statement against the White House
[…]
Meanwhile, on ABC’s World News Tonight, anchor David Muir noted Trump’s call for unity but quickly dismissed it by proclaiming, “it does lead to scrutiny tonight of the political rhetoric in this country, and has it finally reached a breaking point?”
During the report, senior White House correspondent Cecilia Vega recalled Trump’s “sober call for unity” but also touted CNN’s Zucker “mincing no words” in his own heated remarks. Vega completely ignored the attacks against the GOP and chided how President Trump was probably not going to learn a lesson from the day’s attacks.
[…]
In sharp contrast, CBS White House correspondent Weijia Jiang took time on the CBS Evening News to not only show examples Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, but she also played soundbites of Clinton, former Attorney General Eric Holder, and California Congresswoman Maxine Waters calling for greater incivility from their supporters. All of those Democrats had bombs sent to them.
But let’s get everyone. Conservative media has to be on the blame list too, right?
While reporting from outside the evacuated Time Warner building, CNN hosts Chris Cuomo and Brian Stelter asserted without evidence on those behind the bombs and heavy usage of the word “but” that it’s the President and “right-wing commentators” and “outlets” who should look at themselves in the mirror.
Cuomo started by suggesting there’s a “larger context” that must be considered since “your tone...matters” even if the person behind the bombs had no political motivations.
With that, Stelter was off and running, trying to have it both ways and cover himself by asserting that “there's no need, no reason to assume motives, to assume anything at this point” to only then insert that keyword “but” before launching into how the right’s responsible.
Oh, and where would we be in this circus without CNN’s own Anderson Cooper saying that Trump doesn’t see bomb targets as human beings. Oh, shut up, dude.
CNN cut away from the rally to feature an irate Cooper looking to take swipes. “That’s the President speaking in Wisconsin. Speaking quite hypocritically, I just have to say,” he spat. Cooper indignantly complained that Trump did not refer to CNN by name in his remarks:
He made no mention of an explosive device sent to this building behind me. The headquarters of CNN. A news organization he routinely attacks. He calls reporters the enemy of the American people. And, yet, he said it's the media's fault for the kind of reporting that media organizations have been doing.
“He also made what appears to be a first attempt at something familiar, putting the perpetrator and victim on equal footing,” Cooper claimed.
About 20 minutes later, Cooper brought on Zeleny so they could decry “what the President did and did not say today throughout the day.” One of the first things Cooper railed against the President for was not naming the targets. “He gave no names, nothing to indicate he sees them as individual human beings and distinguished former public servants,” he suggested.
“Anderson, one thing the President did not say, he did not say that this was an act of domestic terrorism,” Zeleny said. The White House reporter then claimed he asked Trump about it in the East Room and “he looked me square in the face and did not answer the question.”
Zeleny also lambasted Trump for “not take responsibility at all for any of the heated rhetoric”.
And now, CNN host John King is saying no one is blaming the president. Are they on crack over there at CNN?
NOT MAKING THIS UP: @CNN's John King just said "nobody's blaming the president"
— Brent Scher (@BrentScher) October 25, 2018
This @CNN chyron is utterly ridiculous: pic.twitter.com/ygitubPiDC
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) October 25, 2018
This is such selective outrage. Let’s not forget that letters with ricin were sent to Secretary of Defense James Mattis, forget that two GOP candidates were assaulted in Minnesota, and forget that Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) almost died in a mass assassination attempt last year; the shooter, James Hodgkinson, was a Bernie Sanders supporter. He opened fire on congressional Republicans practicing in Alexandria for the annual baseball game.
Eric Holder said Democrats should kick Republicans. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) called for mob-like tactics to be used against Trump officials, Hillary Clinton said you cannot be civil with Republicans, and a Minnesota Democratic Party spokesperson said that Republicans should be sent to the guillotine. We don’t start these fights. Democrats’ bad behavior has been covered up, thanks to having valuable allies in the elite media. For example, networks harped on the Soros bomb scare but didn’t mention the previous acts of insanity and violence committed by the Left. They have an armed wing, folks. They’re called Antifa. Also, remember the attempted stabbing attack on the GOP candidate in California? Yeah, in case you missed it because the liberal media suffocated this story with a pillow, it happened:
Via Newsbusters:
NBC reporter Ron Allen touted Soros’ statements decrying the “politics of hate” and “his foundation urging ‘politicians across the political spectrum to tone down their rhetoric. Words have consequences.’” Allen did note that House Majority leader Kevin McCarthy had a rock thrown through his office window.
While ABC and NBC briefly touched on two cases of conservatives being targeted, there were a plethora of cases they flat out ignored. They ignored a knife attack against GOP congressional candidate Rudy Peters (who's challenging Democrat incumbent Eric Swalwell in California), along with a mass shooting threat against meetup of Trump supporters at the Trump International Hotel in DC.
As the Fox News Channel reported last Thursday, there had been a noticeable upsurge in physical assaults and threats against conservative candidates and lawmakers. Most of which, the liberal broadcast networks had hidden from their viewers.
Among those blacked out cases was a Minnesota candidate who was knocked out from a sucker punch to the head and “a Democratic operative for a group funded by George Soros” who was arrested for “allegedly assaulting the female campaign manager of the GOP candidate.” Meawnwhile, a GOP candidate in Vermont got a letter warning her she was being hunted by Socialists.
The networks also turned a blind eye when two-time failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called for greater incivility and Obama-era Attorney General Eric Holder called of the GOP to be kicked.
We have zero evidence concerning the political leanings of whoever did this. It could be a right-leaning whacko. It could be a left-wing nut job. It could be an apolitical psychopath, but let’s blame Trump supporters because the media is biased, liberal, trash, and untrustworthy. No evidence, but just an educated assumption, says the liberal pundit-sphere.
— Ryan (@alwaysonoffense) October 24, 2018
There is no evidence, but there very well could be: that’s the liberal media standard—and people wonder how the Kavanaugh, UVA, and the Duke Lacrosse stories quickly spiraled out of control. This could be applied to any story, frankly. MSNBC has been going hard on the blame Trump, or his supporters, angle…because they have to keep their liberal zombie audience feeling like they’re the normal ones in this mess:
Talking to former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Philippe Reines, who worked in the Clinton State Department, Melvin observed: “...we do know that we are, shall we say, in a climate now where there are often attacks made on the media, the press, journalists. And we know that there are attacks that are often made on George Soros and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.” The host then asked: “Two weeks before these midterms, Philippe, does it seem like someone might be trying to send a message here?”
Reines promptly accused the President of being responsible for that “climate”: “I think your larger point is correct, in that, you know, irrespective of what this person’s political leanings or motivations are, we are living in an atmosphere where hate and violence have been not only incited but condoned by Donald Trump.”
The Clinton aide went so far as to argue that even if the would-be bomber turned out to be “the most liberal person in America,” Trump would still be to blame: “It doesn’t really matter....there are a lot of people who are living on the edge of sanity in general....And when people in authority kind of lift the guardrails from that, people are gonna act out, and there is no human being more responsible for the climate we’re in than Donald Trump.”
And then there’s John Heilemann who said that a Trump supporter committing this whole act was the “most plausible” assumption:
Is it possible, is it possible that there's some kind of a false flag operation here? Again, without knowing who the person was that did this, the perpetrator or motivation, I don't think we can rule out anything. But a much more reasonable and a much more plausible suggestion of potential motive here is the more straightforward one which is this is an attempt by someone out there who having dwelled in the atmosphere of Donald Trump's strategy of excitement over the last two years that someone has decided to target critics of President Trump and tried to harm them and tried to intimidate -- at a maximum harm them physically. These pipe bombs were functional. Try to harm them. Not just harm them but intimidate and silence President Trump's critics. That's the most reasonable assumption. Its not the only possibility but its the most plausible one on the table right now.
We’ll let law enforcement does its job. The liberal media will do its job peddling conspiracy theories and lobbing accusations without evidence.
Bonus: When CNN’s Chris Cuomo defended left-wing violence committed by Antifa.