Hosni Mubarak

Quick! Get NBC's Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel a chair.

Engel claims that he was so shocked at Barack Obama's statement that he now considers Egypt neither an ally nor an enemy that he "almost had to sit down."  So if this is true, why did Obama support the overthrow of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak who was very much our ally, Engel wonders. Here (and below the fold) in this video is Engel in desperate need of a chair over the shock administered by Obama's uncertainity about whether Egypt is friend or foe.

Conservative author Glenn Beck on Sunday took to Twitter to blast New York Times columnist David Brooks for comments he made last year about the talk radio host's predictions concerning Egypt without President Hosni Mubarak.

On PBS's Newshour last February, syndicated columnist Mark Shields mentioned Beck in a discussion about how people attending the CPAC convention viewed the goings-on in Egypt from a domestic political perspective (transcript via LexisNexis):

On Saturday's Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC, NBC correspondent Richard Engel conveyed that the reform advocates who led the toppling of Hosni Mubarak's regime in Egypt are distraught at the kinds of candidates that Egyptian voters are choosing to replace Mubarak, with both major presidential candidates likely to curtail freedom if elected. Engel recounted: (Video at bottom)

On Sunday's Meet the Press on NBC, as guest Rick Santorum criticized President Obama because he refused to support a democracy movement in Iran that might have weakened the anti-America radical Muslim government of Tehran, but, by contrast, supported a democracy movement in Egypt directed against a pro-America government - which resulted in an election that recently handed more power in Cairo to radical Muslims - host David Gregory accused the GOP presidential candidate of being "patently contradictory." (Video below)

As he moved into the foreign policy portion of the interview, Gregory brought up a recent speech in which Santorum accused President Obama of engaging in "appeasement" against America's enemies,  and then the NBC host defended Obama's foreign policy:

There are lies, damned lies, and what passes for history from Ed Schultz.

Never one to let reality intrude on his delusions, Schultz cut loose with a whopper on his radio show Thursday while talking with Mike Tate, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, about Time magazine making "The Protester" its annual person of the year (audio) --

Filling in for host Martin Bashir during the 3 p.m. ET hour on MSNBC on Thursday, left-wing Washington Post writer Jonathan Capehart outrageously compared British Prime Minister David Cameron to deposed Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak for asking UK law enforcement to disrupt social media communication among criminals planning violent riots.

Capehart ranted:

If shutting down social networking, or even the internet, over fears that it's used to organize and possibly bring about civil unrest sounds familiar, it should...when things hit a boiling point in Egypt earlier this year, the entire internet was unplugged for fear that people were using it as a tool to bring about the revolution they so badly desired. And how did that attempt at censorship work out, Prime Minister? Not so well.

[Special thanks to MRC intern Alex Fitzsimmons for providing video of the segment after the break]  

 On CBS’s Sunday Morning show, during his regular commentary, right-leaning CBS contributor Ben Stein gave a pessimistic view of the "Arab Spring" movement to topple authoritarian governments in the Middle East, charged that America would regret allowing Hosni Mubarak lose power in Egypt, and predicted that the radical Muslm Brotherhood would take over there.

He also gave rare attention to the Muslim Brotherhood’s history of alliance with Nazi Germany during World War II. Stein:

The most potent political force in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, hates the U.S., loathes Israel, condemns the killing of bin Laden whom they praise as a martyr, and they've been wedded to terror for their entire existence. Oh, P.S., they were closely connected with Adolf Hitler. They'll probably take over Egypt completely sooner or later.

As NewsBusters previously documented, Nazi Germany helped build up the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1930s to spread anti-Jew hatred in the Middle East.

 On Wednesday’s NBC Nightly News, chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel informed viewers that he is "worried" that a major war between some of the Arab countries and Israel could be in the not too distant future because of the "ferociously anti-Israel" sentiment of the "Arab street" that is likely to gain power in countries like Egypt. He ended up concluding: "But I think, over time, this thing ends in Jerusalem."

After host Brian Williams and Engel had discussed the likely prosecution of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, and the disappointment of Libyan rebels at the level of assistance to their cause supplied by NATO, Williams posed the question: "You’re back here in New York for a few days. The question I’ve seen most people ask you: Where does this all end?"

Engel sounded more pessimistic than he did during the protests in Egypt from January and February. Engel:

This whole movement in the Middle East, and I'm worried about it because while people in the region deserve more rights and they want more rights and they're embracing more of the will of the Arab street, well, the will of the Arab street is also ferociously anti-Israel, against Israel.

He added:

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell was disgusted by "many intemperate" comments made about the news that CBS's Lara Logan had been brutally and apparently sexually assaulted while covering the Egyptian celebration that followed President Hosni Mubarak's resignation last Friday.

Not at all surprising, the only one he bothered to read on Wednesday's "The Last Word" was written by a conservative (video follows with transcript and commentary):

For the second week in a row, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift found herself in a hostile crowd on PBS's "McLaughlin Group."

During a lengthy segment about the crisis in Eqypt, after Clift claimed the protesters were secular, the entire panel almost pounced on her with Mort Zuckerman saying several times, "That's nonsense" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

 On Thursday’s Last Word show on MSNBC, host Lawrence O’Donnell trashed conservatives for raising concerns about the possibility of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt as the MSNBC host claimed that, "The Muslim Brotherhood is the latest excuse for the right wing to whip up anti-Islamic hysteria, including the old standby that President Obama is secretly a Muslim." Minnesota Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison, who appeared as a guest for the segment, even referred to the Muslim Brotherhood as a "scarecrow," and dismissed concerns about whether a new government might adhere to the peace treaty with Israel as the Democratic Congressman asserted that, "You haven’t seen one Israeli flag. You haven’t seen one."

But, while the overwhelming majority of Egyptian demonstrators may be motivated by a desire for better economic conditions and more freedom, it would be incorrect to claim that there is a complete absence of anti-Israel sentiment. On Sunday, January 30, the NBC Nightly News showed an image of one sign held by a protester that tied then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to Israel by placing the Jewish Star of David over his face. And, on Saturday, January 29, ABC's World News Saturday showed a second sign with a similar image of Mubarak with a smaller Star of David on his forehead, as if to attack the Egyptian leader as being too friendly to Israel and Jews.

On the Friday, January 28, NBC Nightly News, correspondent Richard Engel even recounted concerns by some Egyptians that the Muslim Brotherhood would "hijack" the anti-government movement to take power:

Most of the media were predictably jubilant and giddy on Friday when it was announced that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was stepping down.

Acting as the voice of reason was syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer who on PBS's "Inside Washington" spoke some inconvenient truths about the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt's similarities to pre-Islamic Revolution Iran that America's press have been dishonestly downplaying for weeks (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Chris Matthews on Friday said that Hosni Mubarak's exit from Egypt and the jubilation now happening in Tahrir Square took Barack Obama to have happen.

As soon as he said it on the 5 p.m. installment of MSNBC's "Hardball," the host quipped, "His critics will probably say, 'Yeah, we knew this was coming'” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In a classic example of liberal media bias, Chris Matthews on Friday bashed former President George W. Bush for holding Prince Abdullah of Saudia Arabia's hand when he visited the Crawford ranch back in 2005.

After mentioning how "the bowing and scraping" involved in the "paramount task" of presidents honoring Arab leaders has sometimes "been nearly comical," the host of the syndicated program bearing his name completely ignored President Barack Obama's deep bow to the very same man less than two years ago (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Something unusual happened on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show the other night -- a guest expressed an opinion that didn't dovetail with Maddow's. This doesn't occur often, presumably not by accident.

Here is an exchange on Monday between Maddow and former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk, now the director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, over political upheaval in Egypt and the extent to which Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak is an American puppet --

[Video after page break]

Having mercilessly attacked Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) for six days in a row, MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Wednesday set his sights on conservative talk show host Glenn Beck.

After an opening teaser in which the "Hardball" host referred to "the right-wing freak-out over Egypt," Matthews ended up doing two segments about the Fox News star in which he and his perilously liberal guests called the object of their disaffection a "fear mongering," "completely crazy," "full mooner," "Captain Queeg" (videos follow with partial transcripts and lengthy commentary):

It was 16 degrees warmer in my upstate New York town this morning than it was in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.  If any further portent of the apocalypse is necessary, consider that on his MSNBC show this evening, Cenk Uygur compared Barack Obama to Ronald Reagan . . . and clearly came down on the side of Ronaldus Maximus.

The subject was Egypt.  Uygur played the clip of Reagan's immortal "tear down this wall," and contrasted it with Obama's wan words on the need for "orderly transition" in Egypt.

View video after the jump.

As NewsBusters previously reported, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Monday got duped by a satirical website quoting from their spoof article about Sarah Palin advocating an attack on Egypt as if it was a serious commentary.

On Tuesday, proving once again that it takes a lot of rationalizations to be a liberal these days, Maddow blamed her mistake on Fox News's Glenn Beck and other prominent conservatives (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):

On Monday's Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN, disgraced former CBS anchor Dan Rather attributed the current protests in Egypt to President Obama's June 2009 speech to the Muslim world in Cairo: "He [Obama] fueled this uprising in Egypt. When he came to Cairo, let us remember, and he spoke of- listen, we stand for freedom and democracy and listening to people. The Egyptians believed his rhetoric" [audio available here].

Host Piers Morgan's segment with Rather aired 36 minutes into the 9 pm Eastern hour. He devoted the entire interview to the Egyptian issue. Near the end of the segment, the CNN personality asked, "If you were President Obama right now, what would you now say?" The former CBS Evening News anchor began by voicing his sympathy for the President: "I'm glad I'm not because it's a real dilemma." He then placed himself in the Democrat's shoes: "I would quietly send word to Mubarak that his days are finished, that we will do our best by him. We appreciate what he's done, but events have moved past him. I would do that quietly. I wouldn't say that publicly."

[Video embedded below the page break]

Chris Matthews on Friday asked the panelists on the syndicated program bearing his name two questions about the crisis in Egypt that must have made his liberal viewers gasp.

Moments after surprisingly asking NBC's Andrea Mitchell if "neo-conservatives who believe in really trying to push democracy" were right all along, Matthews asked David Sanger of the New York Times if George W. Bush was "better equipped than this President to deal with this crisis" (video follows with transcript and commentary):