Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel once said that people should “never let a serious crisis go to waste.” That philosophy is apparently shared by Wajahat Ali, CNN contributor and a writer for The New York Times.
Ali put that on display Monday evening, when he responded to the El Paso and Dayton shootings by expressing delight in the term “#MassacreMoscowMitch” trending on Twitter. He added that that “still ha[s] faith in America” before he had to delete the post after many conservatives condemned it.
According to an article written by Mediaite's Morgan Phillips:
The hashtag had been in reference to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocking gun control bills, such as one [in] February which had passed the House which would have instituted universal background checks.
Ali said that “right wing trolls” were doing anything to deflect from gun control by pouncing on his tweet.
Later, Ali noted that the “right wing” was acting in “bad faith” while trying to appeal to “both sides” of the issue. “In good faith I deleted it, but they're not fooling anyone.”
Then on Tuesday morning, the correspondent added: “The right wing trolls, many with blue checkmarks (a term often used online as a slam on conservative Republicans) are out today. They're hungry and desperate.”
“Anything to deflect from gun control, white supremacist terrorism or talking about Trump and their enabling of his racism,” he noted. “Don't let them rattle you. Keep moving forward.”
In Phillips's post, he inclued a round-up of conservative media figures calling out Ali and CNN. One that Phillips included came from The New York Post's Jon Levine, who joked that Ali was “just a CNN contributor and NY Times co contributing writer tweeting completely normal stuff.”
Another example included National Review senior writer David French:
Many of the very people who are deeply concerned about right-wing rhetoric are tweeting #MassacreMoscowMitch and believing that it will be totally fine and no one will respond with violence.
Or maybe they don’t think it will be fine, and want to see violence.
Based on some research by NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck, Ali was on CNN as part of panel discussions which totaled 21 mintues and 58 seconds across three shows on Tuesday. And not once was he was about his tweet.
In addition, a quick search of the NewsBusters archives for Wajahat Ali will yield a small but potent sampling of his nonsense.
Two weeks ago, Ali bashed President Trump on CNN Right Now for his rhetoric against the four socialists in the “Squad” and criticized Trump and his supporters for contributing to a “pattern” of what Ali considers “white nationalism.”
Last week, Ali was part of a panel on the same CNN show that entertained the notion that 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) was a Russian plant.
Back in March following the Christchurch mosque attack in New Zealand, Ali appeared on CNN Newsroom to suggest that the gunman's views “ha[ve] been mainstreamed by Republican elected officials” and suggested that criticism of liberal billionaire George Soros by President Trump was “anti-Semitic.”
