Cross posted to the MRC's NewsBusters blog
On the late Monday, early Tuesday edition of Late Night with Seth Neyers on NBC, the liberal host devoted his nightly commentary to trashing "lumpy white guys" who have appeared on Fox News recently to defend President Donald Trump's decision to order the killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. Meyers accused Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and George W. Bush White House members Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer of being "serial liars" as he rehashed his opposition to the Iraq War, accusing supporters of "lying" the country into the conflict.
After beginning his commentary by recalling that President Trump claimed that the killing of Soleimani would prevent a war with Iran by preventing some of the terrorism he planned to orchestrate, Meyers went after Trump's supporters as he responded:
SETH MEYERS: You can't just kill a top general of a sovereign nation and just call it "de-escalation." That's like getting drunk and driving your car into a K-Mart, and then telling the cops: "I did it to stop my car!" Trump and his allies are lying in the exact same ways the Bush administration lied us into a catastrophic war in Iraq nearly 17 years ago when the exact same people are doing it. After the attack, Fox News decided to turn to their stable of lumpy white guys who have been wrong about everything. Like Lindsey Graham, a champion of the Iraq War; former Bush officials and serial liars Ari Fleischer and Karl Rove.
He then recited liberal arguments against invading Iraq as he continued:
MEYERS: Why are these the best experts that we can get? This is like doing a segment on organizing music festivals and interviewing Bill McFarland and Ja Rule. And the same people are trotting out the same lies that they did 17 years ago. For example, Vice President Mike Pence lied and tried to link Soleimani to 9/11 in a tweet that was not supported by the evidence, and, if that sounds familiar to you, it's because its right out of the playbook of George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly linked Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups without providing any evidence.
Even though the news division of his own NBC network, as well as other news outlets, claimed in the past that al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- a former Osama bin Laden lieutenant -- was in Iraq plotting terrorist attacks against Western countries and their allies before the invasion of Iraq even began, this was not acknowledged as the NBC host seemed certain there was no link between the al-Qaeda terrorist group and Iraq.
Additionally, his own network at one point tried to undermine President Bush by repeating claims that the President refused to attack al-Qaeda bases in Iraq early on because it might undermine the rationale for an invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Meyers went on to play clips of President Bush and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld awkwardly discuss the Iraq invasion before concluding: "It's amazing that we found a way to elect people who think these guys had the right idea. It's like if 17 years from now somebody made a movie called Cats 2: This Time with Genitals."
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Monday, January 6/early January 7 Late Night with Seth Meyers on NBC:
SETH MEYERS: You can't just kill a top general of a sovereign nation and just call it "de-escalation." That's like getting drunk and driving your car into a K-Mart, and then telling the cops: "I did it to stop my car!" Trump and his allies are lying in the exact same ways the Bush administration lied us into a catastrophic war in Iraq nearly 17 years ago when the exact same people are doing it. After the attack, Fox News decided to turn to their stable of lumpy white guys who have been wrong about everything. Like Lindsey Graham, a champion of the Iraq War; former Bush officials and serial liars Ari Fleischer and Karl Rove.
Why are these the best experts that we can get? This is like doing a segment on organizing music festivals and interviewing Bill McFarland and Ja Rule. And the same people are trotting out the same lies that they did 17 years ago. For example, Vice President Mike Pence lied and tried to link Soleimani to 9/11 in a tweet that was not supported by the evidence, and, if that sounds familiar to you, it's because its right out of the playbook of George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly linked Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups without providing any evidence.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH (FROM JUNE 17, 2004): The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al-Qaeda was because there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
JIM MIKLASZEWSKI, NBC REPORTER (FROM FEBRUARY 12, 2002): There are reports that there is no evidence of a direct link between Baghdad and some of these terrorist organizations.
DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me because, as we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns -- that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know.
MIKLASZEWSKI: Excuse me, but is this an unknown unknown?
RUMSFELD: I'm not going to say which it is.
MEYERS: Oh, you're not going to say, so it's unknown whether it's an unknown unknown. But one known that we do know is what Trump knows, which is a known unknown, because he unknowns what he doesn't know, meaning we know he knows no knowns. It's amazing -- it's amazing that we found a way to elect people who think these guys had the right idea. It's like if 17 years from now somebody made a movie called Cats 2: This Time with Genitals..