Fox’s Greta Van Susteren set up Republican guest John Sununu to blame President Obama for the spread of ISIS. Then she helped validate his ridiculous answer.
Last night, Van Susteren hosted Sununu for a discussion that purported to “ask” whether Al Qaeda and/or ISIS will be stronger or weaker by the time President Obama leaves office. As if anyone could have doubted what the answer would be. It was all but prescripted with the choice of Sununu as the only guest. This former Romney campaign co-chair has a history of making racial attacks on President Obama that have included suggesting he’s not a real American.
But just to make sure, Van Susteren asked a question that guaranteed Obama would be blamed for the rise of ISIS.
VAN SUSTEREN: What do you assign as the reason this happened? Some people say because we didn’t leave troops behind in Iraq or that we pulled out of Afghanistan too soon. Do you agree with that? And obviously, this is the benefit of that 20/20 hindsight.
Notice that she didn’t include the misbegotten invasion of Iraq as one of the factors? Why, could that be because that happened during Republican George W. Bush’s presidency?
Sununu’s answer was the real stunner, though.
SUNUNU: I think the first thing that made a big difference is when President Obama started talking about the United States as not an exceptional place. He began to embolden them by giving a signal, in essence, that the United States was not going to project and exercise its power.
And the second thing that happened was 2011. You point out the withdrawal in Iraq but there was another event and it was the Arab Spring. And both of those were mishandled by this administration.
Rather than challenge Sununu’s outrageousness, Van Susteren moved on to suggest that Obama's naiveté was to blame. She opined that Obama thought he was going to change everything with his 2009 speech in Cairo.
Sununu piled on.
SUNUNU: It was almost the beginning of the problem because the way he handled dealing with the United States capacity to be a constructive partner in the region disillusioned our allies and, frankly, emboldened our enemies.
Again, Van Susteren didn’t challenge Sununu’s evidence-free attack. Instead, she helped validate it.
“Experience counts, doesn’t it,” she said, implicitly affirming Sununu.
Oh, and by the way? Obama has repeatedly proclaimed America’s exceptionalism. But Van Susteren never debunked the falsehood.
Watch it below, from last night’s On The Record.
Well, John’s a foreigner himself — born in Havana of an El Salvadoran mother and father of Palestinian descent; “foreign affairs” might be his one area of expertise.
Besides, since when has expertise in ANY field been a prerequisite, when it comes to bashing the President . . .
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Just think— this loudmouth moron was actually the chief of staff to a president of the United States.
It’s also funny because what “experience” did Dubya have? I mean, aside from his record of FAILED businesses before becoming Governor of Texas (a position which has very little real power*), Dubya didn’t have much to offer, aside from his last name.
(*Just for comparison, look at the Wiki articles for the Governor and Lieutenant Governor of Texas. The former has a grand total of 485 words—including 12 footnote indicators. The latter has a grand total of 608 words—including only 1 footnote indicator. Both totals exclude the article titles, the “From Wikipedia” byline, and miscellany like “References” and “See Also” and “Content Boxes.” Going simply by character/letter count, the article for Lieutenant Governor has some 800 more characters than the article for Governor.)
Typical of fox news experts on (enter subject here).
