Yesterday in a live report from Jerusalem, NBC reporter Ayman Mohyeldin -- winner of the Damn Those Conservatives to Hell Award at the 2015 MRC DisHonors Dinner -- strongly suggested that a Palestinian man that Israel police killed was not armed with a knife and that there was no evidence that any police officer had been stabbed by the assailant. [h/t Jeff Dunetz of Lid Blog]
He was quickly corrected by his colleague Jose Diaz-Balart, anchoring the 10 a.m. Eastern hour of MSNBC Live. Notice, however, how he spins his reporting afterward to save face. Transcript and video below:
MSNBC
MSNBC Live with Jose Diaz-Balart
Oct. 14, 2015; 10:14 a.m. EasternAYMAN MOHYELDIN, live from Jerusalem: Particularly at the time of this incident, we did not see any individual be stabbed or get stabbed within this vicinity. You can see our overlook gives us a pretty good access. I mean we would have been able to get a sense of where you know where something like that could have happened. It certainly would have triggered a response from the Israeli police. Keep in mind here's where the checkpoint is. Israeli police, according to local Israeli media, suggest that this individual attempted to stab one of the Israeli police individuals that was here. We didn't see any Israeli police officials being treated on the scene. We haven't seen anyone since taken away.
We haven't seen anyone here injured, among the Israeli police, that is. Important to make that distinction. What we can say is that the individual who came across the corner, and once he came across the corner became directly in my line of sight did not heed the calls by the police to stop and ultimately was shot further down.
The point that you made, and obviously picked up by a lot of the local media here, the individual was dressed in camouflage. I can tell you he was a male. Can't really tell you a lot more about his age. Certainly didn't look to me -- and again, I'm ballparking it here -- but definitely did not look to me older than 25 years old. It looked from where I was standing to be at least a young man, did not look to be you know particularly armed. Again, that was confirmed by the fact that the police ultimately removed his clothes.
They didn't find any explosive devices on him. I was trying to keep an eye to see if they were taking anything off of his body, perhaps if they took a gun, if there was a gun that was visible. There was no gun that was visible. And at one point, we could clearly see from where we were lying, from where we were standing where his body was lying, both of his hands were open and both of his hands did not have a knife. Now that was after police arrived to the body so it's--
JOSE DIAZ-BALART: Ayman -- as a matter of fact, you know, this is important because you're covering this story live and you're seeing it once and you're actually witnessing it, not knowing what you're seeing until you actually process it. But in the video that we have, that you have, that is, as you say -- I don't think anybody else has this video -- we can clearly see the man in camouflage T-shirt and pants with what appears to be, at least in his right hand, a knife. And take a look at this video right here. We can't really determine what he has in his left hand but he's holding something in his left hand and in his right hand, it's fisted and you see coming right out of the fist what appears to be, like at least a five-inch or longer black blade.
Again, I'm not there. We weren't. And you, you didn't know this was coming so you don't know. But it very clearly seems to show a man with a T-shirt, camouflage T-shirt, camouflage pants, an untucked T-shirt. These are important issues. Holding what appears to be in his right hand a knife, in his left hand something. Something that I can't determine what it is. He had already crossed the barrier.
You heard over and over again officials telling him to stop. As he is running towards the Damascus Gate, opened fire. But clearly, it seems to me, that he's holding in his left hand something, and in his right hand what seems to be a knife.
MOHYELDIN: Right. Absolutely. And that's the point I was trying to make was that when they flipped the body over, when they secured the body, it was at that point that his hands were then emptied. And so that's why it was important that you were making that distinction, because our cameras were able to zoom in.
The point that we're making about when he came around in our line of sight, because everything was moving fact and the fact that the police opened fire on him, it was obviously difficult for us to concentrate at that particular moment. When his body was laying there and the forensics team came by, they certainly removed his clothes, they made sure that he didn't pose an immediate threat. We were talking about the fact that they were making sure that they didn't have any explosive devices on him.
And it was at that point when they opened his hands, that was the point where I was saying to you, once the forensics team was there going through the scene, did not have the weapon in both of his hands. That does not mean that he did not have a weapon. It just means that particular incident where he became visible to us again, his hands became visible to us with my bare eyes they were at that point, um, emptied from the weapon that he may have been carrying.
