OPINION:
If you want to know how horribly and disgustingly partisan America has become in the days of Trump Derangement Syndrome, look no further than what occurred over the weekend.
The president ordered the U.S. military to take out the worst terrorist in the world. The special outfit known as Delta Force stormed into Syria, tracked down Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and cornered him in a tunnel. The coward blew himself up with a suicide vest.
America and the world are now safer. That’s a good thing, right?
Wrong.
It’s a terrible thing because Donald Trump is president.
When Barack Obama ordered the mission that took out Osama bin Laden, the heinous terrorist who led the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, Americans cheered — as they should.
What did they do this time? They booed. Literally.
Hours after detailing the mission at the White House, Mr. Trump attended a World Series game in Washington. When his image came up on the jumbo screen, boos were heard throughout Nationals Park.
The cesspool that is D.C. was weirdly unified over the upstart team, which in May had a 0.1% chance of making the playoffs. Not any more. The mere image of the president, along with first lady Melania Trump, brought jeers from the rafters.
But let’s back up. Mr. Trump was mocked Sunday when he said “bin Laden was a big thing, but this is the biggest there is. This is the worst ever.” Worse than bin Laden? You bet. Here’s why.
Al-Baghdadi was the scum of the earth. As founder and leader of the Islamic State, he was seeking to set up a global caliphate under Islamic law.
“His followers burned victims alive in cages or slowly drowned them. They threw gay people off rooftops, and beheaded others on videos they then broadcast online,” the Daily Mail reported. “They executed 13 teenage boys in Iraq with machine guns because they were watching a football match on TV. They shot, suicide-bombed and massacred any rival Shia Muslims they could find in a relentless frenzied attempt to ethnically cleanse them off the face of the planet.”
During his reign of terror, ISIS was responsible for the attack on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, as well as massacres at a soccer stadium, European cafes, a festival in France and an Ariana Grande pop concert in England. ISIS killed hundreds in the attacks and injured many more.
But the U.S. media couldn’t give Mr. Trump even a modicum of credit.
“Face the Nation” put on James Winnefeld, Barack Obama’s deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who ripped Mr. Trump for “piling humiliation” on ISIS after the mission. “If you look back at the bin Laden raid, we treated his body with respect that is due under Islam.” (For the record, they photographed his dead body then dumped him in the sea.)
Nick Paton Walsh, an international correspondent for CNN, said Mr. Trump’s statement was reminiscent of ISIS, saying the “explicit details” he gave “echoed, frankly, the crudeness you would often expect to hear maybe from ISIS.”
The Washington Post went so far as to claim al-Baghdadi was courageous in death.
“The assertion that Baghdadi died as a coward was, in any case, contradicted by the fact that rather than be captured, he blew himself up,” columnist Max Boot wrote. Another columnist, Greg Sargent, said Mr. Trump’s detailed account of what happened on the raid featured “deeply sick and twisted” rhetoric.
And, of course, The Washington Post wrote in a headline Sunday referred to al-Baghdadi was an “austere religious scholar.” Not “world’s worst terrorist.”
Tim Graham, director of media analysis for the Media Research Center, a conservative press watchdog, summed up the MSM’s reaction.
“What a fascinating glimpse into the mind of the liberal media. They have developed such an aversion to covering the president favorably that they cannot even bear to celebrate an American special-forces victory over ISIS,” he told The Washington Times.
That’s where we are today. The mainstream (read: liberal) media cannot even deliver straight news coverage on a major event that made America and the world safer.
And it’s all about to get worse, with impeachment and the 2020 election.
Brace yourselves.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on Twitter @josephcurl.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.