MSNBC’s The 11th Hour host and serial liar Brian Williams debased himself once again, showing a tinge of anti-Americanism on Wednesday by declaring that the U.S. was “the only nation on Earth to have set off nuclear weapons in anger” and deemed itself to be “the arbiter of who else gets to have them on the planet.”
Williams was wrapping up the late-night show with former Obama administration official Jeremy Bash and Medal of Honor recipient Jack Jacobs to discuss NBC’s report claiming that President Trump wanted a tenfold increase in the country’s nuclear arsenal.
“Jeremy, I’ve asked you this and you’ve answered in the past, but it deserves repetition. Why is it the only nation on Earth to have set off nuclear weapons in anger, they have flown through two of our Bombay doors and no other nation gets to kind of be the arbiter of who else gets to have them on the planet,” Williams shamefully wondered.
Thankfully, Bash didn’t follow Williams down that road (although he didn’t scold him either):
Well, look, this is a nonproliferation regime that was set up and it’s — we're down to our benefit. We're down to a nuclear power, but we want to make sure that there aren’t additional ones. We want to make sure that Iran does not go nuclear. We want to make sure that North Korea does not expand its nuclear weapons stockpile and so, I think our interests in the world are for nonproliferation and limit the availability and use of nuclear weapons.
Jacobs did the same, noting how dangerous North Korea has become as someone who doesn’t “have our interests at heart.” Thus, North Korea itself serves as a reason why we should play a role in who has them versus who doesn’t.
Not surprisingly, Brian Williams has gone down this road before in shaming those who carried out that solemn duty and made the decision to drop the bombs in World War II.
On May 27, 2016, Williams was overseeing MSNBC’s coverage of then-President Obama visiting Hiroshima when he stated this alongside Andrea Mitchell and NBC News presidential historian Michael Bescholss:
It is and that is still the threat that people worry about that this material will fall into the wrong hands. If people have found the U.S. to be preachy in the years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki about the use of weapons, it’s because we’re the only nation to have used them in anger. Sometimes, I am amazed that the world has been without these weapons all the years since, but it is a point of, a great pride by the people who have seen to it.
Rewinding to 2005, my colleague Brent Baker chronicled how Williams cornered Enola Gay navigator Dutch Van Kirk if he had felt any “remorse” for his actions in essentially ending World War II by dropping a nuclear bomb on August 6, 1945 over Hiroshima.
Here’s that exchange:
OVER VIDEO OF THE DEVASTATION AND INJURED CHILDREN, WILIAMS INTONED: “70,000 people in the city of Hiroshima were killed instantly. The lingering radiation killed 70,000 more over the next five years. But Dutch and his fellow crew members will have none of the controversy surrounding the bomb. They point out that the firebombing of Japanese cities earlier in the war killed four times as many people. It's widely believed the U.S. would have invaded Japan, and that the Japanese would have fought to the very end.”
WILLIAMS TO VAN KIRK [NEXT TO THE ENOLA GAY]: “You just told me the story about one photograph from the war that always kind of catches you, the Japanese soldier returning to his city that's been destroyed. Do you have remorse for what happened? How do you deal with that in your mind?
VAN KIRK: “No, I do not have remorse. I pity the people who were there. I always think of it, Brian, as being, the dropping of the atom bomb was an act of war to end a war.”
Williams’s knock against the U.S. was sponsored by The 11th Hour advertisers Geico, the movie Marshall, and One A Day vitamins.
Here’s the relevant transcript from MSNBC’s The 11th Hour with Brian Williams on October 11:
MSNBC’s The 11th Hour with Brian Williams
October 11, 2017
11:52 p.m. Eastern
BRIAN WILLIAMS: Jeremy, I’ve asked you this and you’ve answered in the past, but it deserves repetition. Why is it the only nation on Earth to have set off nuclear weapons in anger, they have flown through two of our Bombay doors and no other nation gets to kind of be the arbiter of who else gets to have them on the planet?
JEREMY BASH: Well, look, this is a nonproliferation regime that was set up and it’s — we're down to our benefit. We're down to a nuclear power, but we want to make sure that there aren’t additional ones. We want to make sure that Iran does not go nuclear. We want to make sure that North Korea does not expand its nuclear weapons stockpile and so, I think our interests in the world are for nonproliferation and limit the availability and use of nuclear weapons.
COL. JACK JACOBS (Ret.): There’s a great danger, of course, that North Korea will then export even more of its technology to act as we do not now have nuclear weapons and who will do us — who don't have our interests at heart, that's a real danger.
WILLIAMS: And God forbid shots are ever exchanged. Isn't there an equal chance that the kind of fighting that could take place between South and North, again perish the thought, is the kind you served in — kinetic warfare of the kind of classic variety — conventional variety?
JACOBS: And much more deadly because you're talking about enormous number of soldiers on both sides. We have the capability of unleashing an enormous amount of conventional capability on the North Koreans, so do the South Koreans, so do the North Koreans, and so do the Chinese. It could be a mess.
BASH: What bothers me, Brian, is that the President has taken away one of America’s great strengths, which is the power of diplomacy. He said I'm not interested in that, only one thing will work.
