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The Russians Did It? Chuck Todd Signals Liberal Media’s Fake-Bomb Panic

Posted on | October 26, 2018 | Comments Off on The Russians Did It? Chuck Todd Signals Liberal Media’s Fake-Bomb Panic

 

The kind of people who watch MSNBC are deeply confused:

NBC’s Chuck Todd said he fears the Russians could be responsible for the mail-bomb scare that has targeted top officials in the Democratic Party, as well as CNN and actor Robert De Niro on Thursday.
“I have this fear that it could be some Russian operation too, in designed to do what’s happening now,” Todd said.
Todd added that we shouldn’t rule out that possibility and that the mail-bomb scare is dividing the country before going to break.
Todd made the comments during a segment on MSNBC’s “Meet The Press Daily,” about how the extreme political rhetoric in American politics has divided the nation, and how it could be responsible for this mail-bomb scare.

Hello? Who is “dividing the country”? Not me. However much “extreme political rhetoric” I might publish — and I guess quoting Democrats qualifies as such — my readers are not divided by it. Responsible adults can read the news and opinions here without being driven to pipe-bomb extremism, although I’m not so sure about the MSNBC audience:

MSNBC’s Ben Collins suggested that person responsible for the mail-bomb scare that has targeted top officials in the Democratic Party, as well as CNN and actor Robert De Niro, probably reads the conservative news website the Drudge Report on Thursday.
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle began the segment with Collins by highlighting an image of the device sent to former CIA Director John Brennan. On the device, there appears to be an image of a parody ISIS flag that has been circulating on the internet since 2014 as a meme. . . .
Collins noted that the image basically appears to be an ISIS flag. “But instead of the Arabic script, there’s like fake naked ladies on there, and it says ‘get ‘er done’ on it,” he said.
“What does that mean?” Ruhle asked.
“It’s a Larry the Cable Guy joke. It’s like, not that sophisticated. This is not a smart thing, it’s a troll is what this is,” Collins responded. “It’s meant to sort of symbolize that he’s on one [political] side. This is from a conservative meme parody website from 2014.”
Collins added that this is a very obscure meme that didn’t get a lot of traction.
Ruhle asked Collins about the group that created the meme and what they represent.
“It’s just some guy really. It’s a guy in Scottsdale, Arizona who made a meme in 2014. It’s been around conservative web forums, not like young people [forums],” Collins said. “I’m talking like people who follow the Drudge Report and Fox News and stuff like that. It’s that sort of circle.”

The Drudge Report is the world’s most popular Internet news site. Everybody in the news business — whatever their politics — reads Drudge. How many times a day does Chuck Todd check Drudge?

Meanwhile, a nationwide law-enforcement task force is on the job:

“We are investigating all this with great precision. I can say with certainty that we will identify and arrest the person or people responsible for these acts,” New York police Commissioner James O’Neill said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. “Law enforcement professionals do not care about the politics involved in these acts.”
Bill Sweeney of the FBI’s New York office said an army of agents is “fully engaged” in the probe.
“This is a nationwide investigation involving multiple jurisdictions coast to coast,” Sweeney said.

What worries the liberal media is the possibility that this bomb hoax (none of the “suspicious packages” exploded, a telltale clue) will turn out to be a “false flag” operation, perpetrated by a left-wing kook who deliberately targeted Democrats in an attempt to cast suspicion on Republicans. If this is the case, and the perpetrator is apprehended soon, it could be very damaging for Democrats in the midterms.

Roger Simon lays out the common-sense questions:

Even if Brennan was misspelled, Occam’s Razor is beginning to spell “HOAX”  correctly.  But by and for whom?  Here as well we don’t know, but again followers of William of Ockham would tend to point you toward the left wing — a single leftie nutcase or some Antifa types, perhaps. After all, cui bono? With Kavanaugh and the caravan, things were not looking good for the Democrats. The subject had to be changed before it was too late and the blue wave turned red. So far, however, it’s not working. No wonder the reliably left-leaning Chuck Todd is suddenly pointing toward Russia, not some MAGA-hatted redneck with a Confederate flag tattooed on his chest, as the perpetrator. It’s a dead giveaway.  He’s probably hoping for the Russians now.  Because if it goes as it’s currently looking, it’s bad news for his team.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) By the way, we don’t know that the bomb hoaxer has any political motive. Remember that police theorized the Speedway bomber was attempting to divert police attention from their investigation of the murder of Julia Scyphers. Solving a case like this might take months, but advances in forensic science — and the reality of ubiquitous video surveillance — could lead to an arrest soon.

Steve Nelson at the Washington Examiner talked to retired FBI agents, who cautioned against jumping to conclusions, and pointed to one recent high-profile case where the motive was not what it seemed:

There are some notable recent examples of terroristic threats triggering inaccurate public conclusions. Last year, Jewish Community Centers in the U.S. received hundreds of threatening phone calls, creating significant public concern about rising anti-Semitism. Authorities in Israel determined a local teenager was responsible.

In that case, the motive was boredom:

When asked to explain his actions, the teenager told psychiatrists that he made the threats to avoid being bored.
“I did it out of boredom; it was like a game. I understand that it is forbidden. I am sorry, I won’t do it again,” he said.

If bored teenagers are a terrorist threat, we’re all doomed.

UPDATE: Fred Burton, chief security officer of the private intelligence firm Stratfor, appeared on Fox News yesterday and said he believes law enforcement will identify the suspect soon:

Bill Hemmer: Why do you think they’ll have this case cracked by the end of the day?
Fred Burton: I think as a former federal agent who has looked into cases like this we never had the resources in my day to deal with a problem like this. Now the entire system is geared to find people just like this. I think that now they have CCTV footage of the suspect. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re not watching somebody perhaps like we saw unfold in the Austin bomber. They’re just putting the pieces of the case together.

(Hat-tip: Kirby McCain on Twitter.)

UPDATE II: BREAKING: Suspect in Mail-Bomb Hoax Scare Reportedly Arrested in Florida.



 

 

Category: Crime, Election, MSNBC, Terrorism

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