***To read the full blog, please check out the complete post on NewsBusters***
Early Monday evening as details of a loud explosion at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester England were first rolling in, something obviously very wrong as MSNBC’s chyron was reporting “at least 20 dead.” But for the network’s Law Enforcement Analyst Jim Cavanaugh on Hardball, the terrifying noise could have been anything, including a very loud balloon popping as he told host Chris Matthews.
Shortly before Matthews brought Cavanaugh on the program, he played video from the dash cam of a vehicle outside of the Manchester arena that caught the sound of the blast. The sound was very deep and rumbled for a time, the owner of the vehicle could also be heard saying “no” in response to the sound.
Cavanaugh, having listened to the video, thought that it could possibly have been a balloon or something else:
The police have not told us the cause of this loud explosion. There was some reports of smoke, but we could have people injured in an accidental explosion, some kind of event in there with equipment, loud noise, you know, sometimes these concerts use fireworks, so there's reports that there's large gas-filled balloons there.
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