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 below, from the December 8, 2016 America’s Newsroom.
As for the bigger meat of this story, there is absolutely going to be a “Blame Obama First” routine going on at Fox News for the next 4 years. They will justify this nonsense by saying that Obama blamed everything on W for 8 years and so they are okay to say everything now must be Obama’s fault. They’ll of course be ignoring that Obama came into office during a terrible recession that was caused by the tremendous mismanagement and incompetence of the W regime. They’ll be ignoring that W’s foreign policy had destroyed any credibility the Americans had before his people began torturing and renditioning people at will throughout the 2000s, and before the Right led the country into two different futile and unfunded wars. The country that Obama leaves to the Pence Administration today is one that is not in a recession and is fairly secure around the world, as well as one that has not destroyed its own environment or labor force and has tried to cobble together a health insurance system that can cover as many people as it can.
Within the first 6 months of 2017, we can expect to see the Pence Administration undo nearly all of that, mostly within the first 5 weeks. This will be a much more aggressive White House around the world, which will quickly lead to trade difficulties and I’m sure to a series of military confrontations with groups like ISIS. The generals Pence is bringing in are likely to go big with the bombing idea as a way of “making a point”, which will of course just drive more locals into the arms of these groups, but who worries about that? And this will be a craven White House at home, given that we will now have Education, Interior, Labor and the EPA supervised by people who object to the existence of those departments in the first place. I would not be surprised to see all four of those departments radically reduced, particularly the first and the last, which I believe the Right would like simply ended as soon as possible. And we already know that the ACA is gone and that the various international treaties (Climate Change, Iran, Cuba rapproachement) will be ripped up on January 20th.
So there will be serious consequences and a LOT of unhappy and angry people. There will be stresses that stymie the economy, as well as other problems. All of this will be blamed on Obama by Fox News, who will say it’s his fault for leaving them such terrible problems that now must be fixed. The funny part of this is that they will have already have succeeded in erasing his presidency. The constant blame they’ll throw at him afterwards will just be the extra kicks the bully usually gives to his victim after beating him up on the playground. Just to make sure the other kids pay attention.
Not to mention the big ISIS story on the Clinton News Network (in Fox speak) is European intelligence services are reporting ISIS battlefield capability is so degraded their propaganda is but a trickle and redirected from battlefield glory. So now the fear is standard terrorism in Europe like truck bombs, tools of the weak.
Meanwhile on Fox News: Obama failed because lies.
Terrence McCoy writes for the Washington Post and he really has it against the purveyors of fake news. The two in this article admit that they’re writing fiction and I assume they’re not good enough to write for reputable sites.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/for-the-new-yellow-journalists-opportunity-comes-in-clicks-and-bucks/2016/11/20/d58d036c-adbf-11e6-8b45-f8e493f06fcd_story.html?utm_term=.240a941afc0b
McCoy has written many other articles that I will now read. I believe that this sort of behaviour ranks up there with the idiots who cry “fire!” in a crowded venue.
Yes, Donald is off to a great start to bring our country together with his far right extremist cabinet picks doesn’t he.
My point is that there is a fine point of balance of peace and war that a good American President must be ever vigilant on the lookout for.
That other post is a fly buzzing around. Swat him or don’t swat him. It’s your call.
George W Bush has pretty much imbued the republican brand as warmonger. That is up to now. We aren’t exactly sure what to expect from Trump. He’s picked the cabinet from hell but those guys can be fired later. And if he tells Paul Ryan and senator Turtle to go fuck themselves, good for him.
But if he does not have the stomach to put troops in harm’s way, the rest of the world may see Mr. Trump as an easy mark. Trump has zero political experience. He’s never so much as ordered a dog catcher into action. I don’t want him to be a warmongering imbecile like W, but the job may simply be too much for the man.
