Middle East

Following a morning in which NBC’s Today offered only criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his visit to the United States, Monday’s NBC Nightly News continued piling on the denunciation of Netanyahu for creating a “storm of controversy” during “a tense and critical moment” in U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations. Fill-in anchor Savannah Guthrie proclaimed that a “storm of…

Informing Hardball viewers of something host Chris Matthews would never tell them, moderately-conservative columnist Kathleen Parker on Monday gave some much-needed context to why Speaker John Boehner did not extensively consult with the White House prior to inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address the Congress.

The Obama White House is in full war mode against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of our best ally in the Middle East, for accepting House Speaker John Boehner's invitation to speak before Congress, while it mollycoddles that region's most dangerous nation, Iran. No one crosses Obama without facing his wrath. No one dares. He is the president.

Haras Rafiq blasted the blame-everyone-but-the-terrorist mindset of many on the left on Thursday's New Day on CNN during a discussion of ISIS member "Jihadi John," who has been identified by several media outlets as Mohammed Emwazi. Rafiq singled out a British organization, CAGE, for their defense of Emwazi, who has personally beheaded several Western hostages: "I'm quite disgusted at the way…

Hardball host Chris Matthews devoted the first 11 minutes of his February 25 program to rehashing tired, discredited talking points about the upcoming March 3 speech to a joint session of Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As of Wednesday morning, NBC's morning and evening newscasts have yet to cover ISIS's kidnapping of up to 150 Christians from northeastern Syria on Monday. On Wednesday, Today yawned at this latest example of the Islamic extremist group's persecution of Christians. Instead, they devoted 1 minute and 13 seconds to a Slate writer's advice to parents on giving their children allowances.

Friday's NBC Nightly News surprisingly (and perhaps, unwittingly) contradicted President Obama and his administration's talking point on combating extremism – that providing "job opportunities for these people" will discourage Muslims from joining terrorist groups. Correspondent Katy Tur's report on three British teenagers who may have traveled to Syria to join ISIS featured a counterterrorism…

Anderson Cooper spotlighted The Atlantic's Graeme Wood's thorough article on ISIS on his Wednesday program. Cooper wondered, "President Obama...said we're at war with people who have perverted Islam. The question, though, is: is that really true?" The anchor asked Wood about Mr. Obama's statement, and he gave a blunt reply: "Well, you know, he doesn't really have the authority to say that. I don'…

While all three network morning shows on Thursday covered President Obama defending his refusal to label terrorism as Islamic extremism during a Wednesday speech, only CBS This Morning actually pushed back on the President's argument.

While his fellow network news colleagues all but ignored any criticism of President Obama’s speech on Wednesday afternoon and his avoidance of using the term Islamic extremism, NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel ripped the current U.S. strategy for defeating ISIS during NBC Nightly News. “ISIS is spreading like a virus and months of U.S.-led air strikes don't seem to be containing…

Latest dispatch from President Obama's Department of Terrible Deeds in the Name of Christ . . . Morning Joe invited the State Department spox Marie Harf on today to give her a chance to clarify what she said to Chris Matthews about the US being unable to "kill our way" out of the ISIS problem and the need to focus on the "root causes" of terrorism. After brushing off the suggestion by General…

There are still 10 months to go in 2015, but Mike Barnicle is a strong frontrunner for Clumsiest Comment of the Year. In a Morning Joe segment today on ISIS outrages, and shortly after mentioning the atrocity in which ISIS burned dozens of people to death in Iraq, Barnicle said that the complexity of dealing with ISIS makes "you want to set your hair on fire."

Mike Barnicle: proud member of the Barack Obama "terrible deeds in the name of Christ" school of moral blindness . . .  Joe Scarborough opened today's Morning Joe with a protracted and impassioned plea for America—and in particular President Obama—to call out radical Islam by name. Mika Brzezinski was dubious, citing unspecified "difficult times" in the past when presidents used the wrong…

On Monday night, the panelists on the Fox News Channel (FNC) show Special Report excoriated the Obama administration for saying in a statement that the Coptic Christian men from Egyptian beheaded by ISIS in a video along the Libyan coast were “Egyptian citizens” and labeling Islamic State fights as merely “ISIL-affiliated terrorists” instead of further identifying them as Muslims or Islamic…