The Media Research Center couldn’t stop raging that coverage of President Trump’s war in Iran fell short of the pro-Trump propaganda it demands:
- On CNN, Democrat Discovers $200 Billion Is Too Much Money—When Trump Spends It
- Capehart Tries To Cast Doubt On Claims Of Success In Iran
- Blackwell Mourns Spending Money To Protect The Troops Instead Of Welfare Programs
- Margaret Brennan Warns of U.S. War Crimes, Tries to Drive Wedge with NATO Leader
- Iran Ally Waghorn Claims Strikes Driving Populace Toward Regime, Support Growing
- The View: Military Has Accomplished Nothing in Iran, Lectures Hegseth on Service
- Stewart Claims Iran War Violence Is ‘Almost Sexual’ For Hegseth
- CNN Analyst: Trump’s Peace Plan Is Telling Iran Agree, or ‘This Is a Stick-Up’
- Brennan Spins U.S. Military Success as Proof of Iran’s Strategic Genius
Clay Waters played whataboutism in a March 21 post:
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is a case study in liberal media hypocrisy regarding intervention in the Middle East. His opinions on the Iraq War (led by Republican president George W. Bush) were hateful, but when Democratic president Barack Obama invaded Libya (also without congressional approval), a newly war-mongering Kristof beamed that we were (yes) greeted as liberators. Now with Donald Trump in charge, going to war in the Middle East is once again dangerous and bad.
Kristof’s March 18 column, “How Trump Should Extricate Himself From His Iran Quagmire,”opened “The ongoing debate about whether the Iran war will become a quagmire misses the point. President Trump and America are already in one.”
In his March 14 column, “Does Trump Risk Turning America Into a Rogue State?” he lamented (after forward United Nation’s lies about Israel targeting children in Gaza): “Now in Iran, I fear we may be retreating even further from the principles we once proclaimed, loosening the shackles that civilized nations place on themselves to protect our shared humanity.”
[…]Notice there’s no mention of the downside of a war Kristof sunnily supported: Obama’s 2011 war in Libya, which led to the overthrow of unstable dictator Moammar Qadhafi but helped usher in Islamic extremism.
[…]Kristof hedged his bets on Libya’s future prospects (“The Libyan experiment could yet fail. Yet let’s also savor a historic moment…”) which turned out sadly necessary, exemplified by the September 2012 attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, raising concerns that the Obama administration had been blind to the dangers of Libyan extremist groups.
Comedy cop Alex Christy went after John Oliver again in a March 24 post:
HBO’s John Oliver accused President Trump and the rest of the administration of “stretching the truth to breaking point” on Iran on Sunday’s Last Week Tonight. However, Oliver left out some basic facts that would have made their comments seem much more reasonable.
With multiple allusions to a press conference by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, where he attacked the media’s habit of not talking enough about the military’s success, Oliver huffed, “And I’ve got to say, for all this administration’s disdain for ‘cable news spin,’ and insistence that people ‘report the reality,’ they’re sure stretching the truth to breaking point here because even as Trump’s claiming that we’ve won, the Pentagon’s now requesting $200 billion in extra funding for this operation—sure suggesting it’s going to be going on for a while.”
Whether they are comedians or more traditional news anchors, the media is incapable of acknowledging that spending money to replenish stockpiles is not proof of the campaign going sideways. In fact, it can be proof of the opposite. The fact that the U.S. has suffered relatively small numbers of casualties due to Iranian missile attacks is because we invested in top-of-the-line air defense.
As it was, Oliver moved on to his next misleading statement as he put up an image of a Truth Social post by Trump and read, “He’s also claimed we’ve destroyed 100 percent of Iran’s military capability, which is a little hard to believe, given they’re still somehow managing to strike multiple other countries in the region, and he claimed twice this week that a former president endorsed his decision to go to war—something they’ve all since denied.”
The very next words that were again also on screen, but Oliver decided not to read, were, “But it’s easy for them to send a drone or two, drop a mine, or deliver a close range missile somewhere along, or in, this Waterway, no matter how badly defeated they are.”
In other words, Trump was speaking figuratively and nowhere claimed that every single last piece of Iranian military equipment had been destroyed.
Christy didn’t explain why he refuses to hold Trump to basic factual standards.
Curtis Houck was reduced to whining about ratings for a CNN town hall on the war in a March 25 post:
On Friday night, CNN held a town hall on the war in Iran featuring State of the Unionco-host Dana Bash in lieu of The Source with Kaitlan Collins and, while CNN and ratings do not necessary go together, it was a particular embarrassment with a paltry 596,000 total viewers, well behind Discovery’s Gold Rush: Mine Rescue with Freddy and Juan, HGTV’s House Huntersand My Lottery Dream Home, a special episode of TruTV’s Impractical Jokers on TBS, and Reelz’s On Patrol: Live.
Nielsen Media Research numbers also showed that, in the coveted 25-43 demo, CNN pulled in only 105,000 viewers, which was well behind all of these programs (albeit by small margins).
CNN also live coverage of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament on fellow Warner Bros. Discovery channels TBS, TNT, and TruTV, but it’s these other programs that showcase how much the liberal elite network’s reach has shrunk.
Tellingly, Houck did not address the actual content of the town hall itself — suggesting it found no offensive (to right-wingers) content in it, even though it likes to do that — instead focusing on its supposedly low ratings.