Terrible news broke out of Berlin, Germany Monday after a truck drove through a Christmas market, killing nine people and injuring dozens, in an apparent terrorist attack. As with many horrific attacks the partisans rushed to politicize it, but during the 3 p.m. ET hour of MSNBC Live, Juergen Kloeckner from the Huffington Post whined that the German right wing seemed to have beat the left to the punch.
“What might be important is that it comes at a really crucial time, this attack,” he explained to MSNBC’s Kate Snow, “We have an election next year and the right wing is already trying to use this attack for their—for their politics.” He complained that they had begun to blame the attack on Chancellor Angela Merkel and her policies. “And have given an impression of where the political debate might go in the next weeks here in Germany,” he continued.
“So, right wing politicians at this hour, just two three hours after it happened, are already jumping on it,” stated Snow, seemingly put off by the development. But it’s rather hypocritical for either news outlet to bemoan the politicizing of an attack when both of them are guilty of it.
At the beginning of the summer, HuffPo published a piece blaming the Orlando, Florida nightclub massacre on, “everyone who watches Pat Robertson, Bill O’Reilly, FOX and Friends,” in addition to “every card carrying member of the NRA, whether they are shooting animals for sport or for food contributed to this murder.”
And in the immediate aftermath of the airport bombing in Brussels, Belgium, MSNBC brought on a reporter from The Atlantic who blamed the attack on “ease of getting guns here.” He also admitted that, “It's easy for bad folks to hide among good folks … it's easier for folks to slip through Belgium borders than some other borders.” And later that same day, an MSNBC terror analyst blamed all of Belgian society for the attack.
That’s not to mention that back in January, 2013, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz hyped the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting as a possible turning point against gun rights. Or as he described it, a “9/11” moment. “We're going to find out within the next few weeks whether Sandy Hook was the 9/11 of gun violence in this country,” he said. A particularly egregious politicization of death, since it involved innocent children.
Transcript below:
MSNBC Live
December 19, 2016
3:55:48 PM Eastern…
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KATE SNOW: And in terms of the area and what's happening now, is it just devastated? Are there—II imagine things are scattered everywhere and it's got to be an awful scene.
JUERGEN KLOECKER: It's usually a really busy place at that time. There are shopping mall, restaurants around, bars around, and cafes around. And now they’ve locked down the whole place. The police locked down the whole place. [Inaudible] and some people under shock, but they’re trying to empty the place and clean the sights.
SNOW: Juergen Kloeckner—
KLOECKNER: So,--
SNOW: Go ahead, sorry.
KLOECKNER: Alright. What might be important is that it comes at a really crucial time, this attack. We have an election next year and the right wing is already trying to use this attack for their—for their politics. They’re claiming [Angela] Merkel to be responsible for the attack. And have given an impression of where the political debate might go in the next weeks here in Germany.
SNOW: So, right wing politicians at this hour, just two three hours after it happened, are already jumping on it. Okay. Juergen Kloeckner, a reporter for the Huffington Post, Germany, joining us by phone.
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