Last night was Part 2 of Megyn Kelly’s shoot out with CAIR's Ibrahim Hooper over the Honor Diaries movie that Kelly just can’t stop hyping talking about. This segment was just as outrageously biased as the previous night’s. But Kelly put together a mashup video that she tried to fob off as some kind of objective proof that CAIR has terror connections. In reality, it was three virulently anti-Islamic pundits spouting un-factchecked opinions.
You didn’t need the mashup video to get a vivid picture of Kelly’s bias against the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Hooper. She sneered and jeered her way through their discussion. Just as she had in Part 1.
But the mashup definitely added a little “je ne sais quoi” to the whole experience.
The exchange began when Kelly accused CAIR of having ties to terrorism. The Washington Post Fact Checker did a far more thoughtful (almost anything would be) examination of the issue and, basically, concluded that that’s a mischaracterization.
But instead of going into any facts, Kelly cited Democratic Senator Charles Schumer (without offering any context) as “proof.” As if Kelly ever cites Schumer otherwise.
Hooper replied, "Don’t tell me what other people say about CAIR. Tell me what CAIR has said or done that you object to."
Of course, Kelly couldn’t or wouldn't. Her voice dripped with disgust as she accused, “So you can criticize others. You can come on and denounce hateful bigotry but it can never be said against you because that also is hateful bigotry.”
Well, Megyn, it takes one to know one. Bigotry could be your middle name, Madam, and when exposed, you have a hissy fit and blame others for intolerance. Just the way you did when you were confronted about your bogus “Scary black man” crusade against Attorney General Eric Holder (which I have yet to see you take responsibility and apologize for) and your “Santa is white” comment - e.g. you played the victim.
But here’s where the funny part comes. Kelly said, “It’s not me, Sir. It’s many people who have come on Fox News and accused you. Here’s people from ALL (her emphasis) political stripes talking about CAIR.”
She just happened to have a little video montage at the ready. But those “all political stripes” were about as wide-ranging as a typical Fox News “fair and balanced” debate. First up, Bob Beckel, a kinda sorta Fox liberal with a deep hostility toward Muslims. Just this week, Beckel went out of his way to bully and belittle a Muslim guest about Islamic terrorism while the guest was trying to have a serious discussion about the separation of church and state with regard to church flyers in his son’s public school. In the video clip, Beckel gesticulated angrily and said in a raised voice, “It’s radical Islamists we’re talking about here and CAIR is a front for radical Islam!”
Next up, a conservative Islamophobe, Brooke Goldstein, who accused CAIR of having “connections to Hamas. It was founded by two people who are deeply connected to Hamas.” What Kelly didn’t tell the “we report, you decide” network’s viewers? Goldstein has accused President Obama of “codding” and “propping up” the Muslim Brotherhood and she even blamed Anthony Weiner’s (supposed) lack of attraction to his wife on her “connect(ions) to Islamists who want to kill us.” Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, has long worked for Hillary Clinton, including a stint as deputy chief of staff at the State Department. But who knows? Maybe Goldstein thinks Clinton has Islamist ties, too.
While opining about the Weiner/Abedin marriage, Goldstein also said, “I completely agree with Andy McCarthy that she (Abedin) poses one of the greatest national security threats in this administration.”
And speaking of Andrew McCarthy, he was the next and last of the “political stripes.” He said: "It (CAIR) actually grew out of a meeting in 1993 in Philadelphia among Hamas activists who were confronted with the problem of, ‘How do we support Hamas without anyone really recognizing that we’re supporting Hamas?’”
I don’t know about the founding of CAIR but I do know that McCarthy once told Sean Hannity, “Both the Islamists and the left see as their main obstacles to the aspirations that they have for the society that they’d like to see, the destruction of individual liberty, and they see as a major obstacle American Constitutional democracy. They don’t agree on all the particulars but they know that what we cherish as America is something they need to take out.” I also know that McCarthy has accused President Obama of having “deep” “Islamic sympathies” and an agenda that “jibes perfectly with the Islamist scheme to destroy America from within.”
More recently, McCarthy has argued to Kelly that President Obama should be impeached over ObamaCare.
So there you have Kelly’s version of “all political stripes” opining about CAIR: a liberal Islamophobe and two conservative Islamophobes. And not one bit of fact-checking from “straight news anchor” Kelly.