Donald Trump may be skipping his daily intelligence briefings but his pals at Fox News are already teeing up blame for any ISIS attack that should occur during his presidency on President Obama. Fox News Democrat Doug Schoen did all the heavy lifting for his colleagues.
I’ve previously written about Schoen’s wankery. You may recall that recently he announced – on Fox News, no less – that he could no longer support Hillary Clinton after the October FBI letter came out. As far as I know, Schoen never endorsed Trump but he didn’t need to.
Today’s Schoen wankery arose from a recent clip of President Obama saying that the Islamic State’s ability to “initiate major land offenses … was not on my intelligence radar.”
Host Bill Hemmer and Monica Crowley (reportedly under consideration to become Trump’s press secretary) were so excited about that remark, they forgot all about how Obama’s avoidance of those magic words “radical Islamic terrorism” caused almost every terrorism incident during his presidency.
Before either guest spoke, viewers got a little extra help with the messaging via the lower-third banner that misleadingly stated: PRES OBAMA: ISIS “NOT ON MY INTELLIGENCE RADAR”
Crowley declared, “This did not come as a surprise to President Obama. Remember that he was and is ideologically allergic to any military interventions in the Middle East. Therefore he did not want to hear what the military and the intelligence communities were telling him about the rise of ISIS.
His voice hushed with hammy shock, Hemmer asked Schoen, “Is he using the intel community as rationale, Doug? How do you hear that phrase?”
That’s what we’d expect from those two. But Schoen was supposed to be the Democratic voice in the discussion. Yet Schoen's was the most anti-Obama of all.
SCHOEN: I heard this - the word that comes to mind is “damning.” The intelligence community, the president, the national security advisor – Bill, to have our country be at risk in the fundamental way it was and is, and the president saying we missed it, goodness gracious! I mean, this scares me as an American. I mean, with all that we spend on intelligence, we missed it. I think, also, his policies led to it.
That led to a rehash of Obama’s mistakes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. Also revived was the 2014 “JV team” chestnut.
Crowley added that Obama knew about the dangers of ISIS but that “He didn’t want to hear it because he didn’t want to have to act on it.”
Let’s say Crowley's accusations are true about what happened then. What's happening now is that ISIS is being defeated in Iraq and Syria (though they are encouraging recruits to commit terror in Europe). Not only did Schoen not mention that, he went on to more explicitly pre-blame Obama for any Middle East/ISIS/terrorism problems that may arise on Donald Trump’s watch.
SCHOEN: I wish I could disagree with that, as an American. This isn’t a partisan issue. We failed. The new president-elect, Donald Trump, has got a heck of a job to have to do because we failed as an administration and as a country. Not Democrats vs. Republicans.
While Schoen was being so magnanimously non-partisan in his concern for our national security, why didn’t he utter a peep of worry about President-elect Trump skipping national security briefings?
Watch Schoen prove himself a wanker once again above, from the December 8, 2016 America’s Newsroom.
Crossposted at News Hounds.
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