We noted how CNSNews.com continued to protect extremist Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert’s latest outrageous act — depicting Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar as a suicide bomber — by playing whataboutism and making it about Omar. That’s not the only way CNS labored to minimize Boebert’s insult.
A few days earlier, on Nov. 30, CNS’ Susan Jones — author of the above-noted whataboutism piece — focused an article not on Boebert but on Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell commenting on it:
“I’m really concerned about what we’re watching and witnessing happening in this country,” Rep. Debbie Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, told CNN’s “New Day” on Tuesday morning.
She was asked for her reaction to the insult lobbed by Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert at Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar — an insult for which Boebert later apologized (but not to Omar’s satisfaction).
Jones curiously didn’t repeat what Boebert’s insult was; she merely linked to an article at another website. Isn’t CNS supposed to a news organization that reports things rather than offer links elsewhere to them? It seems, however, that Jones wanted her own hatred to take center stage here. She took a needless potshot at CNN host Brianna Keilar, who was interviewing Dingell (and whose name Jones spelled wrong):
“I wish more people were reading Gandhi, Congresswoman,” responded CNN anchor Briana Keillar — an ironic statement, given Keillar’s often contentious interviews with and snide comments about anyone who doesn’t share her leftist world view.
A Dec. 9 article by Melanie Arter rather lazily played whataboutism by serving as stenographer to Republcan Rep. Steve Scalise. First, though, she offered the first full account at CNS of what Boebert said:
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) said Wednesday that he’s never seen a Democrat apologize for something that they’ve said, yet they go after Republicans for saying something offensive.
“So the other night on the House floor was not my first jihad squad moment,” Boebert told a crowd in November. “I was getting into an elevator with one of my staffers, and he and I were leaving the Capitol, we’re going back to my office and we get in the elevator and I see a Capitol Police officer running hurriedly to the elevator. I see fret all over his face. And he’s reaching. The door is shutting. I can’t open it.
“What’s happening? I look to my left and there she is, Ilhan Omar, and I said, ‘Well she doesn’t have a backpack, we should be fine,'” Boebert continued. “So we only had one floor to go and I say, do I say it or do I not? And I look over and I say, ‘Look, the jihad squad decided to show up for work today.’ Don’t worry, it’s just her staffers on Twitter that talk for her. She’s not tough in person.”
Boebert apologized for her remarks on Nov. 26 on Twitter:
“I apologize to anyone in the Muslim community I offended with my comment about Rep. Omar. I have reached out to her office to speak with her directly. There are plenty of policy differences to focus on without this unnecessary distraction,” she tweeted.
Note that Boebert’s apology wasn’t to Omar but to “anyone in the Muslim community I offended.” That’s not a satisfactory apology, no matter what Jones thinks. Then, it was onto Scalise’s whataboutism:
At a Capitol Hill press conference on Wednesday, Scalise was asked whether he believes Rep. Lauren Boebert’s (R-Colo.) Islamaphobic remarks about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) were wrong.
“First of all, if you look at what Lauren Boebert said, she came back and apologized, and I do think this gets lost too often, because we’ve had members of both sides that have said things that we disagree with. I don’t know if I’ve seen a time where a Democrat’s apologized for their statement,” Scalise said.
“Lauren apologized for what she said, and the fact that on the Democrat’s side they want to only go after Republicans, they don’t even ask their own members to apologize for things that were said let alone go after their members,” the congressman said.
“They want it to be a one-sided thing, and I think that hypocrisy is showing, so let them call out what they see wrong as we do, but when a member apologizes, I think you ought to respect and appreciate that, and ultimately, call for a higher standard, but it starts with the members themselves acknowledging if they said something that they shouldn’t have to come and apologize for it and then move on,” he said.
Then, linking to Jones’s whataboutism piece, Arter added: “As CNSNews.com previously reported, Omar herself was forced to apologize for anti-Semitic remarks she made on social media.”
CNS has long given a pass to Boebert’s extremist behavior.