Sunday, in a single hour, the moral and factual disaster that was “Meet the Press,” revealed more about the insulated, echo-chambered, and factually-challenged DC Media than any subject the Sunday show covered.

For the past week, “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd and the National Journal’s  Ron Fournier, have been publicly and sanctimoniously blasting away at what they’ve described, in so many words, as hateful and divisive rhetoric coming from the Republican presidential field.

Fournier is famous for demanding Republicans answer for what others say. Throughout much of last week, Todd used his daily First Read column and appearances on MSNBC  to hand-wring over “the rhetoric.” Aping Fournier, Todd also jumped on Twitter to shame Republicans for not shaming Republicans. (By the way, Todd is factually wrong here about Trump’s “call” for a Muslim registry. He did no such thing):

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Sunday’s “Meet the Press” did not just reveal an astonishing level of hypocrisy, but also a disturbing level of tolerance and approval for hateful rhetoric, at least when it is aimed at “the correct people.”

Let’s take these one-by-one…

 

No Conservative Opinion Allowed

The “Meet the Press” pundit panel was a No-Conservative-Allowed stacked deck: The Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker,  The New York Times’ Helene Cooper, Tom Brokaw, and Fournier spent the entire hour agreeing with one another.

Even the guest list was stacked: Obama’s Homeland Security Chief Jeh Johnson, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s police chief, Bill Bratton, longtime Obama and Clinton ally Leon Panetta, and Republican Governor John Kasich.

 

 Misinformation and Lies of Omission

 Syrian Refugees

Although the issue of Syrian refugees was discussed in-depth, and on more than one occasion, not once was the “Meet the Press” audience informed that ISIS has promised to seed Syrian refugees with terrorists, and might have already done so successfully in last week’s Paris terror attack.

Naturally, the fact that 13% of Syrian refugees are ISIS sympathizers was also withheld.

This is a stunning lie of omission, especially when you consider the fact that it is this very ISIS promise that triggered the reasonable backlash against the White House’s plan to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees here.

Americans were fine with Middle Eastern refugees for more than a decade. Did they suddenly become bigots? No. What changed were national security conditions.

 

Using the Terror Watchlist to Deprive Americans of Their Rights

Even a brutal and brutally effective terror attack will not dissuade the Left and its DC Media allies from their stated goal of restricting our Second Amendment civil rights:

BRATTON: If Congress really wants to do something instead of just talking about something, help us out with that Terrorist Watch List., those thousands of people that can purchase firearms in this country. I’m more worried about them than I am about Syrian refugees, to be quite frank with you.

So if Congress really wants to do something to help the American law enforcement community and the American public, well, let’s start getting serious about doing something that they can actually do something about.

When you only invite leftists on your show, it should come as no surprise that no one spoke out against this unconstitutional attempt to deprive law-abiding Americans of their rights. Rather than challenge Bratton or present the full context, Todd just let that comment stand.

Here are the facts: Without any due process, and using a process that the government has never fully explained, anyone can pop up on the government’s terror watch list. This means that without due process, if this gun ban were made legal, the government could summarily deny any American it chooses of their Second Amendment civil rights.

The idea that the DC Media and Democrats are in favor of such a thing is beyond chilling. The fact that an iconic Sunday show did not present the other side of this argument, is another whopping lie of omission.

Another fact not shared with the audience is, as the National Review’s Jim Geraghty points out, that Senator Ted Kennedy and the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes have both been placed erroneously on that terror watchlist.

Why hide these facts from viewers?

Why didn’t Todd ask the painfully obvious follow-up: If these people are so dangerous, why hasn’t the Obama administration arrested and charged them?

 

Republicans are Responsible for the Obama/Muslim Lie

Todd invited Left-wing activist Arsalan Iftikhar for a panel discussion that included Fournier, Parker, Cooper and Brokaw. The racial pandering and patronizing of Iftikhar was like something out of a top-shelf “South Park” episode satirizing rich, bubbled, predominantly white liberals.

Todd opened the panel by playing Iftikhar’s straight man: “Arsalan,” Todd slow-pitched, “How tough has it been to be a Muslim-American this week?”

With that cue, completely unchallenged throughout, Iftikhar spewed hate and misinformation like nothing I have ever seen:

IFTIKHAR: You know, during the 2008 Presidential campaign when there were whisperings in the campaigns going around of Barack Obama being some sort of crypto-Muslim Manchurian candidate– you didn’t see anybody, you know, speak out against that until Colin Powell actually came on this show to tell his fellow Republicans to shut the hell up.

That is nothing more than a bald-faced lie. The only campaign that spread the Obama-Muslim rumor was Hillary Clinton’s failed and flailing 2008 presidential campaign. The Washington Post confirmed this again two months ago.

You’d think that with five journalists on that panel, at least one would have had the moral courage to correct the record.

Nope. Not one.

They just smiled and nodded.

And Iftikhar was only getting started.

 

Chuck Todd and Ron Fournier’s Hypocrisy When Confronted with Hate Rhetoric 

Republicans Want to Put Muslims In Internment Camps

This is unbelievable:

IFTIKHAR:  Well, I wonder if this forum [with Republicans] will take place in, you know, these American-Muslim internment camps which I’m sure is going to be the next step in—-the rhetoric– and I hope you all come visit me in these internment camps because it’s getting absurd. I mean, it’s absolutely[.]

The only officials I’m aware of who have praised and/or called for internment camps, are former Clinton official and Democrat presidential candidate Wesley Clarke, and Democrat Mayor David Bowers, who was a member of Hillary Clinton’s presidential leadership council.

Not one of those five journalists pushed back against this hate rhetoric or corrected the record with the facts.

Impossibly, it got worse.

 

Republicans Directly Compared to Nazis

Once again the Lords of Rhetoric all remained silent:

IFTIKHAR: I wonder if the two Muslim members of Congress, my buddy, Keith Ellison and Andre Carson, would they be in that database with Mohammed Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, funniest guy in America, Dave Chappelle? You know, we talked about special IDs for Muslims. Would that be similar to the yellow Stars of David that many Jewish people had to wear in Nazi Germany? Would it be a yellow crescent this time?

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Last year about this time, Chuck Todd very graciously invited me to appear on “Meet the Press.” I like him and am frequently impressed by his knowledge and insights. Sunday, however, was barrel-bottom scraping, and hopefully an aberration.

Breitbart News reached out to a number of the participants in Sunday’s “Meet The Press.” If anyone responds, we will update this article.  

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC