CBS’s Face the Nation is facing backlash after presenting a radical Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) board director as a typical member of a focus group on Sunday, without identifying his leading role in the group that was recently removed by the White House from its national strategy on hate over its leaders’ explicit praise for terrorism.
Moderator Margaret Brennan spoke with a “group of Michigan Democrats” regarding their voting intentions and the key issues influencing their decisions.
Five voters, described as students and community activists in Michigan, are seen sitting across from the journalist to take questions.
Brennan turns to a man named “Thasin,” asking if he changed his mind on his choice for the upcoming president, to which he responded in the affirmative, explaining that he “was a champion for Joe Biden until October 7th.”
“I feel he’s disowned us, disenfranchised us with his stance on Gaza,” he said.
According to Thasin, President Biden is “not listening” to Muslims.
“We are asking for a ceasefire this time. It’s a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Too many lives are being lost at this time,” he claimed.
“I was never a single-issue voter. In fact, I used to argue with people not to be single-issue voters. But, for me, this is a deal breaker,” he added. “Way too many lives have been lost.”
Thasin expressed his belief that “a vast majority of Muslims [and] Arab Americans” feel the same as he does on the issue.
“Even progressives … I define myself as a progressive, and many people that I talk to in my circles do not, are not going to be voting for Joe Biden,” he maintained.
What CBS and Brennan failed to note is that Thasin is no typical voter, but an adviser and board member of CAIR’s Michigan chapter, whose full name is Thasin Sardar.
CAIR has been declared a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates and was named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted coconspirator in a Hamas-funding operation. Having failed to condemn the recent Hamas terror attack on Israel, CAIR instead offered its support on the day of the massacre in a statement expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people.
The White House denounced CAIR on December 7, after revelations that its executive director, Nihad Awad — who has a long history of supporting Hamas and helped found CAIR — praised the Islamic terrorist organization and the October 7 massacre, the deadliest attack against Jewish people since the Nazi Holocaust, in a speech to a Muslim group.
The attack saw some 3,000 terrorists burst into Israel by land, sea, and air and gun down participants at an outdoor music festival while others went door to door hunting, torturing, shooting, and kidnapping Jewish men, women, and children in local towns. The massacre resulted in more than 1,200 dead inside the Jewish state, over 5,300 more wounded, and at least 240 hostages of all ages taken — of which nearly 140 remain hostages. The vast majority of the victims are civilians and include dozens of American citizens.
The Islamic Gaza-based terror group, whose charter calls openly for the murder of Jews and the elimination of the Jewish state through relentless jihad, has been designated a terrorist organization by several countries, including the United States, Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
Thasin himself has called Israel an “evil nation” and “the root of all evil,” that “doesn’t have the right to defend itself.” He also claimed that the Jewish state uses “AI generated images to malign Hamas leaders,” while arguing that evidence of the Hamas terrorist organization’s sexual violence on October 7 are “all lies.”
In response to the revelation, users took to social media to highlight the misleading segment.
“Some context that Face the Nation left out: Thasin Sardar is not some random voter off the street. He’s an adviser to CAIR, a group that very recently was fired from a hate crime advisory role by the White House over its leaders’ explicit praise for Hamas,” noted reporter Matthew Chapman.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous how often this keeps happening: the media puts an established political activist or local political party chair in a focus group and solicits their opinion, without disclosing their background, leaving viewers to think it’s a regular average voter,” he added.
“This needs [to] be addressed by CBS immediately,” wrote Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The White House has disavowed CAIR. How could this not be disclosed with background on CAIR?”
“‘Focus groups’ are selected to tell you what the selectors want you to focus on,” wrote one X user.
“Hey Face the Nation, why do you have a hack for CAIR in your focus group? Claiming he’s not a ‘single issue voter’ is undermined by the fact that he’s in this single issue advocacy group,” wrote another.
“Thasin is on the board of CAIR. He was always anti-Israel and pro-Hamas,” another X user wrote. “Note WHEN he said his vote changed – October SEVENTH. This was BEFORE Israel responded to Hamas’s attack and a WEEK before Israel entered Gaza.”
“That man is literally senior staff of CAIR – not a random voter. Come on,” yet another wrote.
The matter comes as the mainstream media continues to face accusations of deception and misleading the public on various issues, including pushing Hamas propaganda as well as a false narrative about the origins of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
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