Posted on 06/19/2014 7:10:57 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It isn’t just the left that is cheering Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly this morning, a day after she gave former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney a sound grilling over Iraq, many on the right suspicious of an interventionist foreign policy are cheering her as well.
On Wednesday night, Kelly hosted the Cheney’s for what was billed as a discussion about their new political initiative aimed at crafting criticisms of President Barack Obama’s present approach to foreign policy. While there is much that is worthy of criticism in Obama’s handling of foreign affairs, some, including AllahPundit, wondered if the Cheneys could serve as helpful messengers.
Kelly brought those concerns directly to the Cheneys. After reading a portion of a brutal op-ed which essentially accused Cheney of setting in motion the events which have led to the present chaos in Iraq, Kelly voiced her own criticism of the former vice president.
“Time and time again, history has proven that you got it wrong as well in Iraq, sir,” she said
That’s a little harsh, and it’s certainly a debatable point, but the substance of this interview is not what struck me. What was important, and is frankly undervalued by the rest of the political press, is how frequently the supposedly conservative news network veers off what many believe is their script. What’s more, when this sort of contentious interview with a prominent Republican occurs, Fox is rewarded for it by their core audience.
The opposite is not the case, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey on cable news viewers’ satisfaction with the product they are consuming:
One thing that differs when it comes to MSNBC is that it does not draw the same uniformly positive reviews from consistent liberals that FNC does from consistent conservatives. While nearly half (45%) of consistent liberals view MSNBC favorably, that’s not much better than how MSNBC rates among those with mixed ideological views (38%). Nearly half of consistent liberals offer no opinion of MSNBC. By contrast, the vast majority of consistent conservatives offer an opinion of Fox News, with 74% favorable and just 5% unfavorable.
“When MSNBC President Phil Griffin decided to turn his network into a liberal answer to Fox News, he was betting that there was a progressive audience out there to match the conservative faithful on the other side,” Politico’s Dylan Byers reacted. “But people don’t simply watch opinion channels because the programming matches their partisan views. The programming has to be compelling.”
Yes, but it’s more than that. Having watched MSNBC evolve as a network over the last two years, it seems to me that their every answer to ratings challenges is strive to be even more predictable. It has become increasingly rare for an MSNBC host to go off the reservation of progressive thought.
Kelly’s interview of the Cheneys was compelling, but it was also contentious and tension makes for good television. It is possible that MSNBC’s core audience simply does not appreciate having the members of their “team” challenged by those who are supposedly on their side. When was the last time you saw Chris Hayes or Rachel Maddow interrogate a Democratic officeholder from the right?
I think invading Iraq was a mistake and done for the wrong reasons.
Fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudi Arabian so Bush Jr. decides to invade Iraq where, it just so happened, the man who plotted to assasinate Bush Sr. lived.
But if Kelly believes that Sadaam Hussein did not have chemical based WMD's she hasn't learned Iraq history very well.
It is a matter of documented fact that Hussein (Sadaam, not Barack) used chemical WMD's on his own fellow citizens.
Like you I wonder if the Bush administration went after the wrong target, although Saddam Hussein was very bad. Our country had been attacked and our response was very mild. A stronger president would have hit terrorist-supporting governments heavily immediately. We should have unleashed trained killers to wreak havoc among the terrorist cells themselves. Personal killing, body-parts on door-steps, children, wives....show them the meaning of anger. They said Bush had no b*lls and they were right. All that has followed shows we chose the wrong response to the attacks.
She was wearing a bathing suit.
It’s a little irritating to hear Kelly repeat the claims of critics. But it is also good to allow the Cheney’s ample time to refute those claims. That is the proper way to do it.
Why didn’t we just nuke Mecca on 09/12/2001????
The other big question is what is we had not fought the First Gulf War???????????/
Exactly!
The questions bothered me at first but she gave them the opportunity to answer their critics and Cheney is a big enough guy to do it.
As I recall her last question was is Obama dangerous and Cheney said yes and it was left at that.
She is a lawyer and I recall deposition prep - you are asked the questions the other side will ask and you get your answers ready. I honestly don’t see a problem with this.
RE: A stronger president would have hit terrorist-supporting governments heavily immediately.
Well, Saddam was not hit immediately, but yes, he was terrorist supporting.
In 1993, the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) directed and pursued an attempt to assassinate, through the use of a powerful car bomb, former U.S. President George Bush and the Emir of Kuwait. Kuwaiti authorities thwarted the terrorist plot and arrested 16 suspects, led by two Iraqi nationals.
Iraq shelters terrorist groups including the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO), which has used terrorist violence against Iran and in the 1970s was responsible for killing several U.S. military personnel and U.S. civilians.
Iraq shelters several prominent Palestinian terrorist organizations in Baghdad, including the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), which is known for aerial attacks against Israel and is headed by Abu Abbas, who carried out the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro and murdered U.S. citizen Leon Klinghoffer.
Iraq shelters the Abu Nidal Organization, an international terrorist organization that has carried out terrorist attacks in twenty countries, killing or injuring almost 900 people. Targets have included the United States and several other Western nations. Each of these groups have offices in Baghdad and receive training, logistical assistance, and financial aid from the government of Iraq.
In April 2002, Saddam Hussein increased from $10,000 to $25,000 the money offered to families of Palestinian suicide/homicide bombers. The rules for rewarding suicide/homicide bombers are strict and insist that only someone who blows himself up with a belt of explosives gets the full payment. Payments are made on a strict scale, with different amounts for wounds, disablement, death as a “martyr” and $25,000 for a suicide bomber.
Mahmoud Besharat, a representative on the West Bank who is handing out to families the money from Saddam, said, “You would have to ask President Saddam why he is being so generous. But he is a revolutionary and he wants this distinguished struggle, the intifada, to continue.”
Former Iraqi military officers have described a highly secret terrorist training facility in Iraq known as Salman Pak, where both Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs receive training on hijacking planes and trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage, and assassinations.”
There were efforts to make the connection to justify the invasion of Iraq as 9/11 related but, as I recall, none was ever documented as fact.
IMHO, the 9/11 attacks on the US were used as a pretense to take out Sadaam Hussein for other, more personal reasons.
Yes, he was a brutal man and heartily disliked. But there are a lot of brutal men in power, like in Saudi Arabia, that we live with. And there is at least as much brutality in Iraq now as when Sadaam was in power.
Good. We should never have gone in. Should never have stayed. And should never go back.
I loathe all “news entertainment” but Kelly was spot on here.
Go away “deficits don’t matter and there are WMDs” Dick. People like Cheney got what they wanted out of the Iraq War. The myopic Dims think it was oil. Not even close. It was the Patriot Act ... America’s vote for fascism and the Police State.
The Cheney’s have done as much to damage this Republic as anyone. I wold send them and ODimwit to the Moon if I could.
Some people here cannot stand had questions…He answered it…We want Obama and Hillary asked these kinds of questions…She has been all over the VA, Iraq,the IRS….she doing a good job if you ask me…Better than BOR..
Megyn Kelly’s “gotcha” brand of “fair and Balanced” is weak and offensive. She’s rather self-righteous. I don’t want “fair and balanced” if it’s ambush, so-called journalism. I guess someone told her she was cute. Just give me the facts without all the garnish. I never liked “fair and balanced” or O’Reilly anyway.
This is a case of the lefty media desperately looking to run with something, anything for there main man Obama.
Megan gave a fair interview with the Cheney’s. They can take care of themselves.
The shills are trying desperately to change the current meme on the Iraq debacle.
Was just listening to Van Holland pimp the idea that it’s Bush’s fault for going in there in the first place.
This is the current talking point they are trying to sell.
Maybe if the GOP opened their frigging mouths once in a while to combat this, we would get somewhere.
It’s about time for McCain to come out and blame Bush too.
Well said. Some of Kelly's questions to Cheney were tough, but they were all fair. And the tough questions were asked respectfully. I see no reason to fault her performance. After all, it was supposed to be a real interview, not mushy, softball theater like what's on MSNBC.
I watched it, and I didn’t think she was that harsh. She let Cheney defend his position pretty thoroughly without interruption, and the discussion then moved to Zero’s dithering and destruction.
She also had a really good segment about the Bowe Bergdahl hearings. This congresscritter was asking a series of questions about the conditions that Bergdahl was living in at the time, what the situation on the ground was—basically trying to soft pedal the whole desertion thing. He was asking this of some military guy that wasn’t even there. Then one of Bergdahl’s platoon mates (Cody Fuller) finally could not take it anymore and asks the questioner if he could address the panel. The congresscritter has this somewhat annoyed smirk, sighs, and then agrees to let Fuller speak. Fuller then goes on to say, in summary, that if they want to know what the conditions were, he could tell them because HE WAS THERE. “I was right there with him. I was under the same conditions” It was great to see the look on that critter’s face. I admire Fuller’s restraint because I would have wanted to throttle them. He was sitting right there as the others were discussing the conditions as if they knew better than someone who was ACTUALLY THERE. Talk about arrogance.
Then she talked to Glenn Beck about his predicting the “coming” Muslim Caliphate a few years back, and how just about every media head pounced on him calling that prediction absolutely ridiculous, calling him a whackjob, etc., and how now they are all choking on their bile. Heh.
Personally, I thought it was a good show last night.
If people want Fox to be the Main stream media, they’ll have to take all that goes with it.
Hannity was in that spot, he used to be on with Colmes for balance.
Hannity is fine at what he does, but it is not both sides. He’s good in a later spot.
She’s going to grill.
If anyone expects the cure for all of this leftism is a complete mirror image, they’re wrong.
Conservatives can take the grilling, and the balanced view.
Doesn’t everyone want to know what to say when people blame Bush?
Anyway, the public who relies on headlines, know that the Bushes have been out for SIX years, a\that it was never as bad as this when they were in, and have a feeling that this is not what Bush intended, are going to blame BO for squandering.
They just don’t know it.
RE: There were efforts to make the connection to justify the invasion of Iraq as 9/11 related but, as I recall, none was ever documented as fact.
Well we have one fact — the uncontrollable Abu Al Zarqawi (Who even Osama Bin Ladin personally had to rebuke for beheading Nick Berg on video) was in Iraq and was killed in Iraq.
The question is — was Saddam harboring him in Iraq or did he go to Iraq AFTER Saddam’s fall?
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