MSNBC Host Says Conservative Americans are a Bigger Threat Than Al-Qaeda

National   |   Kristine Marsh   |   Aug 20, 2021   |   8:57AM   |   Washington, DC

As President Biden epically fails in trying to clean up his Afghanistan debacle, MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace has responded in kind by turning her show into state-run TV. Wallace spent a good deal of her show Thursday deflecting blame from the president and talking about anything else besides Afghanistan. A man arrested outside the Library of Congress today, ranting about Biden and falsely threatening to have a bomb in his car, provided Wallace with the much needed fodder to fret that right-wing extremists were “the gravest” national security threat this country faced.

After a report from Garrett Haake on the bomb threat, MSNBC contributor and former FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi warned Wallace that there was a “perfect storm” brewing of right-wing grievances (including criticizing Biden’s Afghansistan pull-out) that would lead to terrorism. Figliuzzi even claimed, “All of this is causing a kind of online radicalization that, quite frankly, I have not seen since my days working Al Qaeda/ISIS:”

FIGLIUZZI: It’s to amplify the DHS warning that tells us that there’s a perfect storm of grievance and cause developing on extremist sites of all kinds. What is it? And now let’s add, by the way, let’s add to what I’m about to list Afghanistan and a sense that something went wrong there and somehow that’s an injustice, perhaps, to those who served there or not. But let’s rattle it off.

The anti-mask, the anti-vaccine, the January 6th political prisoner notion, the notion that Ashli Babbitt is some kind of martyr for the cause that needs to be avenged and now that Trump will come back and a rally is going to happen this weekend in Alabama. All of this is going to happen and then a major rally that’s been permitted already in the District of Columbia later in September, all of this is causing a kind of online radicalization that, quite frankly, I have not seen since my days working Al Qaeda/ISIS. It’s the radicalization of violence, it’s online, it’s the desire to be a part of something greater than yourself and your willingness to act out violently because of your beliefs.

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Another right-wing terrorism-inducing talking point apparently was illegal immigration. Wallace followed up by attacking “right-wing media” as providing a “pipeline” to terrorism by talking about illegal immigrants at the border and connecting that to Afghan refugees:

But the other topic is a lot of complaints about undocumented immigrants, what is being broadcast night after night on other networks as we cover the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Fearmongering about refugee resettlement. It is a pipeline to a whole lot of people that are not inspired to violence. But for he and she who are inspired to violence, there is a direct line from the disinformation and the fearmongering in right-wing media. 

But this simply isn’t true.

A little while later, the MSNBC host complained to former Trump White House aide-turned-MSNBC contributor Olivia Troye that Republicans weren’t taking the threat of [right-wing] domestic terrorism seriously enough. She even claimed it was the “gravest terrorist threat,” right now, not the Taliban or Al-Qaeda:

For the last seven days there’s been a pretty intense debate going on about whether the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which is undeniably chaotic, but whether the result of leaving around this 20th anniversary of 9/11, and seeing the Taliban take control of that country, whether that puts into motion the conditions that led to Al Qaeda taking up shop in 2001 there. It is abundantly clear that the gravest domestic — the gravest terrorist threat is violent extremism, this is what DHS has been telegraphing for many months now. An aggressive posture toward foreign terrorism and that threat has historically been bipartisan. The recognition of the threat of domestic violent extremism is not even something that most people on the right right now at the national level can even say out loud. It doesn’t even come out of their mouths. How can we be successful in the fight against domestic violent terrorism if one of the two governing parties doesn’t recognize it and agree that we need to stomp it out? 

The 9/11 attacks were the deadliest attacks on American soil, killing almost 3,000 Americans. One person–a Trump supporter– was killed as a result of the January 6 riot. Just a few months later in April, a left-wing extremist killed a Capitol Police Officer and that didn’t lead to months and months of news coverage fretting over left-wing domestic threats. And do we even have to mention the shameful excuses from the media over Antifa and BLM riots last Summer resulting in violence and deaths as well?

MSNBC deflecting blame from Biden was paid for by sponsor HughesNet, contact them at the Conservatives fight back page here.

LifeNews Note: Kristine Marsh is Staff Writer for MRC Culture at the Media Research Center where this originally appeared.