For days now, leftwing TV news networks have expressed horror over the U.S. airstrike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. While their reasons varied, nearly every cable and broadcast journalist agreed that President Trump had caused an international disaster — and, perhaps, a war.
Here are some highlights from the past few days of mass media hysteria:
Some cable hosts were convinced that the Trump administration was lying about its pretense for killing Soleimani. “Do we have reason to trust what this administration says?” MSNBC host Katy Tur inquired on the January 3 edition of MTP Daily. CNN’s Chris Cuomo echoed that skepticism: “Did he just make a decision to keep himself alive politically, that put us and our families at moral risk?”
Other TV journalists, such as MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, chose to panic his audience by claiming Trump’s order would engulf the U.S. in “all-out war with Iran.” O’Donnell’s colleague Chris Hayes condemned the strike as “reckless” and insisted at the top of his January 3 show that the U.S. was in “an extremely perilous moment.”
The most memorable reactions were those that adopted an almost sympathetic tone for Soleimani, responsible for hundreds of American deaths, and his ostensible mourners. Katy Tur, for example, characterized Iran’s nationwide mourning event as “a stunning show of solidarity,” on MSNBC Live. The night after the airstrike, ABC’s Martha Raddatz softened her cadence as she recalled “the Supreme Leader [of Iran] weeping and praying over a coffin draped in the Iraqi flag.”
Meanwhile, CNN international correspondent Christiane Amanpour regaled Wolf Blitzer with a bizarre monologue about what a “legendary figure” Soleimani had been, “not only in terms of what he did, but mythologically, always spoken of by name by the Americans.”
