On Wednesday, it didn’t take long for the liberal media to move from learning about what happened at the deadly school shooting in Florida and the victims to lobbying for gun control. Ghoulishly, CNN law enforcement analyst Phil Mudd, MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews, and MSNBC’s The 11th Hour host Brian Williams chose to condemn America as an exceptional country due to its gun policies.
Taking Mudd first, he berated Situation Room host Wolf Blitzer for asking him about the need to understand the gunman’s motives when the real discussion must be about gun control and how pitiful of a country we are. Rewind to last month and this makes total sense.
Mudd started by complaining that “[t]his country is not serious about understanding where we fall short of international standards” upon “look[ing] at simple statistics”:
In math and sciences, if you look at the countries around the world, our kids are not educated, and yet we say we're exceptional. If you look at health statistics, whether a kid is going to be healthy, infant mortality, we are mediocre. Life expectancy? We are mediocre. But we can't compare ourselves to other countries because we say we're exceptional. The reason I raise that is that, in this case, we're going to say we're an exceptional country. If you look at other peer countries in places like Japan or western Europe, they do not have the incidents of violence against children that we have in this country.
“We cannot in education, in health, in death by guns look in a mirror and say actually, if we're going to be exceptional we need to know we're going to improve, where should we improve,” he added.
Over on MSNBC, Williams told Matthews that many of these shooting sites are “[g]reat places to live but these names will always be associated with tragedy and that city you're in, Washington, if you match it against public opinion polls of their constituents, lawmakers in that city are failing American people every day.”
Matthews thanked Williams and slammed American exceptionalism:
Thank you so much, Brian and that, of course, is the question so much about American exceptionalism is wonderful. How different we are from the rest of the world is wonderful. The country of opportunity and true freedom and this part of the American exceptional story isn't so easy to sell to the rest of the world.
Earlier during the 5:00 p.m. Eastern hour, Mudd broke down in the middle of explaining what it was like to interrogate an Islamic terrorist after they failed to detonate a car bomb and kill themselves. Out of the blue, Mudd flipped script and burst out crying: “A child of God is dead. Can not we acknowledge in this country that we can't — we cannot accept this. I can't do it, Wolf. I'm sorry. I can't do it.”
Blitzer sympathized and flashed his liberal credentials by agreeing with him that “it happens all too often and as a result, people say we have to learn some lessons” that “[u]nfortunately...are never, never learned.”
To see relevant transcript from CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer on February 14, click “expand.”
CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer
February 14, 2018
5:41 p.m. Eastern
PHIL MUDD: You think it is antiseptic. It's not. I talked to a terrorist who almost died because he wanted to blow up a weapon, a car bomb and he was sent to blow up that car bomb by ISIS and Al Qaeda and they didn't tell him he was going to blow up the car bomb. When he detonated, the car caught fire. It didn't blow up and I talked to him after he lost a lot of his skin, his hands, his feet. I have ten nieces and nephews. We're talking about bump stocks, we're talking about legislation. [CRYING] A child of God is dead. Can not we acknowledge in this country that we can't — we cannot accept this. I can't do it, Wolf. I'm sorry. I can't do it.
WOLF BLITZER: Yeah. Alright. We're going on get back to you, but you’re — you're obviously, this is so emotional. Unfortunately, it happens all too often and as a result, people say we have to learn some lessons. Unfortunately, lessons are never, never learned.
(....)
BLITZER: This is Sheriff Scott Israel. “If you see something, say something. If anybody has any indicator that someone's going through a behavioral change, on social media, if there are disturbing photos, perhaps bombs or firearms or just videos or pictures that are just not right, please make sure law enforcement knows about it.” And in this particular case -- go ahead.
MUDD: That's not the answer, Wolf. We know what the answer is. Everybody knows the answer. This country is not serious about understanding where we fall short of international standards. If you look at simple statistics, I'm an analyst by training. In math and sciences, if you look at the countries around the world, our kids are not educated, and yet we say we're exceptional. If you look at health statistics, whether a kid is going to be healthy, infant mortality, we are mediocre. Life expectancy? We are mediocre. But we can't compare ourselves to other countries because we say we're exceptional. The reason I raise that is that, in this case, we're going to say we're an exceptional country. If you look at other peer countries in places like Japan or western Europe, they do not have the incidents of violence against children that we have in this country. We cannot in education, in health, in death by guns look in a mirror and say actually, if we're going to be exceptional we need to know we're going to improve, where should we improve. Why can't we meet the sentence of countries like France, Germany, nordic countries, Japan. It's because we refuse to accept that, in some cases, we can learn from other countries. It's not that complicated.
To see the relevant transcript from MSNBC’s Hardball on February 14, click ”expand.”
MSNBC’s Hardball
February 14, 2018
7:00 p.m. Eastern
BRIAN WILLIAMS: The 7:00 p.m. Eastern time hour has arrived which means it's time for us to toss to Chris Matthews in Washington and Chris, I've been thinking today about places like Columbine and places like Newtown and now Parkland. Great places to live but these names will always be associated with tragedy and that city you're in, Washington, if you match it against public opinion polls of their constituents, lawmakers in that city are failing American people every day.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Thank you so much, Brian and that, of course, is the question so much about American exceptionalism is wonderful. How different we are from the rest of the world is wonderful. The country of opportunity and true freedom and this part of the American exceptional story isn't so easy to sell to the rest of the world.
WILLIAMS: Yeah.
MATTHEWS: We are the only country, Brian, that has Columbine and Texas and Virginia Tech and, of course, Sandy Hook
