Republican hawks took to Twitter and the Sunday political shows to attack President Donald Trump for his latest comments defending Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal regime.This O'Reilly guy is talking to a man who ordered a hit on al Qaeda just days earlier. He sent a team of highly-trained commandos who killed 14 Qaeda fighters on purpose. They also apparently killed at least one little girl not on purpose, and she was the sister of a 16-year-old American citizen Barack Obama killed with a drone strike. Obama also killed their father, an al Qaeda honcho with ties to terrorist attacks inside the United States, in the same way.
Pressed by Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly about how Trump could respect a “killer” like Putin, Trump said, “We got a lot of killers [too]. What, you think our country is so innocent?”
“I don’t know of any government leaders that are killers in America,” O’Reilly retorted.
Both Presidents are killers in a sense, the same sense in which the President of Russia is a killer: they order killing done. The SEALs are killers in a more direct sense. The separation from the gun doesn't make the Presidents better people than the SEALs -- I would wager any sum, based on the SEALs I've known, that the opposite would prove true if the SEALs' identities were known for comparison.
Do these media jockeys think their world would survive without killers? Are they so blind that they can sit down and talk with one and not even know it?
Manifestly.
On the other hand, a better answer from Trump would have been to throw O'Reilly's question back at him: "Bill, are you suggesting we shouldn't have allied with Stalin in WWII? What kind of spin are you putting on in your no spin zone?"
ReplyDeleteEric Hines
O'Reilly would have choked on that, but what amuses me is that various Progs have been yelling FOR DECADES that there was no difference between the US and the USSR (or Russia, now, if it comes to that), and now they're saying it's different?
ReplyDeleteI think this whole brouhaha is just a misunderstanding of terms.
ReplyDeleteO'Reilly means something different by the word "killer;" probably "murderer" was his intended meaning. "Killer" has a generally negative connotation beyond the literal meaning of the term. I don't think O'Reilly would call the SEALs killers although he knows they do kill people.
This is like the commandment "Thou shalt not kill." Really, "Thou shalt not murder" is closer to the meaning, but "kill" has been used interchangeably with "murder" for a long time, and still is in some translations.
Also, I think O'Reilly is including "admire" in the term "respect." Dictionary.com gives it as "esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person." Whereas I think Trump might just mean he respects Putin like he respects a rattlesnake, or he's being diplomatic.
All that said, I haven't paid attention to O'Reilly in a long time. His product is more heat than light, as this exchange exemplifies.
Trump's complimentary remarks about Putin and Putin's leadership also have always been in the context of comparison with Obama. Trump has been clear on this, and so has Pence.
ReplyDeleteThe NLMSM has studiously ignored, if not outright spiked, that, though, focusing only on the taken out of context compliments. O'Reilly, the ex-history teacher and current pundit, knows this as well as the rest of the NLMSM; he elides it just as carefully.
I stopped attending to him a few years ago when he decided to become shrill and to start interrupting and talking over his interviewees whenever they started saying things of which he personally disapproved and which he didn't want the audience to hear.
Eric Hines
Another thing about Trump's statement here, there's no particular reason to give him the benefit of the doubt. He has always been in the "Bush lied, people died" camp and everything he's said about it indicates he thinks it was unjustified.
ReplyDeleteNotice he says "What, you think our country is so innocent?” If the killings were justified, then yes, our country would be innocent.
Don't get me wrong: It's a thousand times better to have him rather than Hilary in the Oval Office. But he's still what he is, and I don't feel that I need to jump to his defense on stuff like this.
Well, there's Hillary (Behghazi)....and Hillary/Obozo (Syrian revolution), and Obozo/Hillary (Ukrainian revolution)...and whoever the President was that overthrew the Shah of Iran which led to the Mullahs....
ReplyDeleteThat would be your buddy and mine, Jimmy Carter.
ReplyDeleteEric Hines
This is sort of on topic:
ReplyDeletehttp://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/anti-trump-hysteria-lets-others-whitewash-crimes/
And not just Benghazi, but all of Libya.
ReplyDelete